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A LIFE 



OF 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 



Francis Parkman in Youth. 

From a Daguerreotype. 



A LIFE 



OP 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 

BY 

CHARLES HAIGHT FARNHAM 



" There is a universal law of growth and achievement. The man 
who knows himself, understands his own powers and aptitudes, forms 
purposes in accord with them, and pursues these purposes steadily, 
is the man of success." — Francis Pakkman. 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1900 



f|V^ 


• COPY 


i^' 


v-fd t» 


DEC 


21 1900 


Onu. 


i. OikiblJN 



- 50027 

Librairy of Coni^ret^t* 

Two CofjES Received 
SEP 21 1900 

FIRST COPY. 

Tni Copy Mivtnd to 

ORDER DIVtSlOH 

OCT 13 1,900., 






Copyright, 1900, 
Bt Little, Brown, and Company. 

All rights reserved. 



mntbttsita IPrcss : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambkidoe, U. S. A. 



eCfjis USemotr is Beliicattti 

TO 

ELIZA W. S. PARKMAN 

AS A TOKEN OF ESTEEM 

AND 

A MEMORIAL OP HEB DEVOTION TO HEB BROTHER. 



C. H. F. 



PEEFACB 



The chief interest of Francis Parkman's life 
was not his connection with the great events, 
important questions, or celebrated people of his 
time, his life being singularly devoid of external 
and tangible elements available for a biography. 
The main attraction of the subject lies in his 
picturesque, manly character, his inspiring ex- 
ample of fortitude and perseverance, and his 
training and achievements as historian. As a 
man he was even greater and more interesting 
than his work. It is therefore the man himself 
that I have tried to keep everywhere in view, 
as the chief object among the experiences of his 
somewhat uneventful life. 

This purpose early brought on a conflict be- 
tween a sentiment and a conviction, — respect 
for Parkman's extreme reserve and a belief that 
this must be ignored by his biographer. He 
never admitted any one to his inner life, nor did 
anything to make himself known to the public ; 



viii PREFACE 

on the contrary he greatly preferred retirement, 
and believed that the public had no legitimate 
concern with the private life and character of an 
artist. It is clearly out of accord with his nature 
and feelings to write a biography of him worth 
the reading, and many may suppose that to lift 
the veil ever so little would be entirely against 
his wishes. Yet good reasons have led me in 
this memoir to be as explicit and intimate as 
possible. 

First, I do not agree with him that the pub- 
lic has no concern with the private life and 
character of the artist. No man, in any form 
of activity, can elude his personal equation, or 
produce work that is disconnected from its help- 
ing and hindering forces. As the artist thus 
depends on the man, a knowledge of the man is 
the indispensable key to his productions. While 
living the artist has an undoubted right to his 
retirement ; it may even be indispensable to his 
free activity. But after he has left us, there 
is nothing but benefit in making known the 
qualities and defects, the capacities and limita- 
tions from which his works took their birth. 
What perfection of senses had he for perceiving 
men and things ? To what degree did his health 
affect his sensuous and mental activities ? What 
were the nature and trend of his intellectual 
faculties ? What powers of sympathy or imagi- 



PREFACE IX 

nation secured his intimate relations with his 
work? What were the force and range of his 
moral sensibilities ? These are among the most 
vital questions in estimating an artist's labors, 
and they can be answered by studying his char- 
acter in the numerous relations of life, far better 
than by considering only his productions. A 
perfect biography would be the strongest testi- 
mony a sound reputation could ask, or a false 
one could fear. 

Second, Parkman gave an example in his own 
person of the utmost thoroughness and sincerity. 
I am convinced that he would desire his biography 
to be written, if at all, in the frankest way. 
Also, he has put himself on record in two auto- 
biographic letters, as if wishing to make his 
experience useful to any student who should 
meet with unusual difficulties. To this end he 
wrote of his conditions and trials with a fulness 
that he never even approached in daily inter- 
course with friends. Finally, there is nothing to 
hide in writing Parkman' s life, and it would 
thus appear that his biography should be as 
free as was his character from all shams and 
concealment. 

The materials for a life of him are extraor- 
dinarily scanty. When I began the work he 
seemed to me almost a mythological person, so 
little matter was there sufficiently interesting for 



X PREFACE 

publication. Being obliged to save his strength 
and sight for historical labors, he wrote very few 
letters, diaries, or papers of general interest. 
Moreover, while his external life was too un- 
eventful to serve as the main dependence, his 
real inner life was never revealed to any one. 
Nor is it easy to show his personality in his 
works, for they are singularly impersonal ; he 
kept to the facts of the story, avoiding all 
expression of his philosophy, tastes, opinions, or 
feelings. Furthermore, he felt little sympathy 
with the political, social, religious, or other 
reforms of his time; and though his views 
were very decided, he seldom had eyesight or 
strength to expend in opposing these move- 
ments. Again, he held but little intercourse 
with noted people. The singular lack of per- 
sonal elements in his life thus made it impracti- 
cable to paint him in a picture of his times 
surrounded by important characters. He could 
be presented only as he was — a solitary, often a 
pathetic, figure in the silence and shadow of his 
study. And in turning thus to the most interior 
source of interest — the growth of his mental 
and moral nature — there was yet found com- 
paratively little to say ; for his opinions, tastes, 
and character were formed when quite young, 
his inelastic, conservative nature changed but 
little with the passage of years, and he left no 



PREFACE XI 

autobiographic record of the forces and methods 
concerned in this development. Then, partly 
because he was not one of those men who say 
and do quotable things, reminiscences of his 
friends were somewhat disappointing. They 
could give few anecdotes, few witticisms, few 
important thoughts, few noteworthy actions. 
And lastly, my own personal intercourse with 
him seemed too brief to justify his family in 
selecting me as his biographer. Our acquaint- 
ance began in 1885, and my departure from 
Boston in 1890 put a stop to our social relations. 
In common with all his friends I often regretted 
that his illness made frequent visits impossible. 
I enjoyed, however, one exceptional privilege 
and opportunity, in camping with him for a 
month on the Batiscan river, near Quebec — a 
good occasion for getting data and impressions 
of value. 

But all these unfortunate hindrances to a com- 
plete knowledge of him were to some extent off- 
set by the strong picturesqueness of the man, 
and by the distinct self-revelations made by his 
unconscious, perhaps unwilling, pen. 

My thanks are due, first of all, to Mr. Park- 
man's family, from whom I have received all 
possible aid. I should like also to express my 
gratitude to his many friends, both classmates 
and those of later years, who have in different 



xii PREFACE 

ways given me much valuable help. And I am 
indebted to Dr. Titus M. Coan for assistance in 
revising the manuscript. 

The chief publications concerning his life are : 
^' Francis Parkman," by the Rev. 0. B. Frothing- 
ham, written for the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, 2d series, vol. viii. ; " Memoir of Francis 
Parkman," by Edward Wheelwright, in the Pub- 
lications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 
vol. i. ; and by the same author a life of Mr. 
Parkman in the history of Harvard College, 
class of 1844 ; " Francis Parkman," by Barrett 
Wendell, in the Proceedings of the American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. xxix. ; the 
remarks made at a special meeting of the Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society in November, 1893, 
by Dr. George E. Ellis, Dr. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, Hon. George 
S. Hale, Hon. John Lowell, Hon. Martin Brim- 
mer, and Hon. Leverett Saltonstall ; an article 
by Prof. John Fiske, and one by Mr. Justin 
Winsor in the " Atlantic " for May, 1894 ; arti- 
cles by Rev. Julius H. Ward, in "McClure's 
Magazine," January, 1894, and in the "Forum," 
December, 1893 ; " Francis Parkman," by Abbe 
H. R. Casgrain ; " Francis Parkman," by C. H. 
Farnham, in the "Critic," February 27, 1886; 
"Francis Parkman," the beginning of a biog- 
raphy by Lowell in the " Century " for Novem- 



PREFACE xiii 

ber, 1892; an obituary notice in the "Nation" 
for November 16, 1893 ; an article by George 
Willis Cooke, in the " New England Magazine," 
November, 1889. 

There is very little unpublished matter from 
Parkman's hand. Though he kept a diary of 
each of his vacation journeys from 1841 to 1846, 
he used the best portions of them in writing the 
" Scalp Hunter," " Exploring the Magalloway," 
" A Convent at Rome," and " The Oregon 
Trail." His letters are disappointing to the 
biographer; few in number, they are still 
more inadequate by their shortness, and by 
their limitation to the seeking and copying of 
historical material, or to the most external mat- 
ters connected with his condition and move- 
ments when travelling. But something has 
been gleaned from Parkman's letters to Abbe 
H. R. Casgrain and others in Quebec and else- 
where. 

Fortunately there exist materials more help- 
ful. First should be mentioned the two ex- 
tremely interesting autobiographic letters to his 
friends. Dr. George E. Ellis and the Hon. 
Martin Brimmer. These papers are poignant 
revelations of his experiences and of some of his 
traits. Then the reader who has already some 
knowledge of Parkman's character, will find 
many autobiographical touches in the novel 



XIV PREFACE 

" Vassall Morton." '^ The Oregon Trail " gives 
some striking scenes in his life, — the last of the 
manly adventures he loved so much, and that he 
gave wp only on account of his subsequent 
infirmities. The prefaces to certain of his books 
contain jDersonal references of value, especially 
as to the difficulties and methods connected with 
the writings of the histories ; while his few mis- 
cellaneous articles, on Universal Suffrage, on 
Woman Suffrage, on Our Common Schools, give 
direct glimpses on important lines of his thought 
and feeling. 

A word may be said about the plan of this 
memoir. As in the case of many other scholars, 
Parkman's external life was unimportant com- 
pared with the more interior interests of his 
education, his method of work, his historical 
productions, and the growth of his character. It 
seemed advisable, therefore, to depart from the 
tradition tliat accepts chronological narrative as 
the backbone of biography. I have tried to 
simplify the reader's labor and gain vividness of 
portraiture, by confining chronology chiefly to 
one chapter, thenceforth viewing facts and expe- 
riences as bearing mainly on achievement and 
development. This method naturally leads to 
some repetitions and returns ; but it enables one 
to bring many of the details of mere biography 
into closer and more significant relations with 



PREFACE XV 



the deeper interests of life. The book thus 
divides itself into three parts : (1) Parknian's 
preparation, (2) the reflection of his personality 
in his works, and (3) the story of his moral 
growth. 



Silver Bay, Lake George, 
June, 1900. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Introductory 1 

Chronological 11 

Part I. Preparation 42 

" II. Parkman as seen in his Works . . 139 

*' III. Spiritual Growth 298 

Appendix A 359 

B 365 

" C 374 

Index 379 



A LIFE OF 
FEANCIS PARKMAN 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY 

If we seek to trace Francis Parkman's individ- 
uality to its source in any of his ancestors, we shall 
be disappointed. Whether regarded as the outcome 
of his antecedents or as a member of his community, 
he was an original man, marked indeed by some of 
the strongest antipathies for the nature, training, and 
pursuits of his progenitors. Like many other dis- 
tinguished New Englanders, he sprang from a cler- 
ical family, all members of the early Puritan colonies. 
Many of them were people of energy, capacity, and 
position ; a goodly number were scholars and divines 
graduated from Harvard College.^ 

^ Mr. Parkman's descent in the paternal line, through eight gen- 
erations, is as follows : 

1. Thomas Parkman, of Sidmouth, Devon, England. 

2. Elias Parkman, born in England, settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, 

1633, married Bridget . 

3. Elias, b. in Dorchester, Mass., 1635, m. Sarah Trask, of Salem. 

4. William, b. in Salem, Mass., 1658, m. Eliza Adams, of Boston. 

5. Ebenezer, b. in Boston, 1703, minister at Westborough, Mass., m. 

(2d) Hannah Breck. 



2 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

Parkman's great-grandfather, the Rev. Ebenezer 
Parkman, a graduate of Harvard, 1721, was a man of 
note. " He is spoken of as a good example of the 
New England minister of the olden time. He mag- 
nified his calling, and was careful not to lower its 
dignity, wielding almost despotic power with firmness 
guided by discretion and tempered with kindness. 
He was largely concerned in making the history of 
the town, and also in writing it. The records of 
the church were kept by him on diminutive pages 
and in a microscopic hand during the whole of his 
pastorate. He also kept during the same period a 
private diary written in the same almost undecipher- 
able characters. A portion of this diary is preserved 
in the library of the American Antiquarian Society 

6. Samuel, b. in Westborough, m. (2d) Sarah Rogers. 

7. Francis, b. in Boston, 1788, ni. (2d) Caroline Hall. 

8. Francis, b. in Boston, 1823. 

The following is his descent on the mother's side, through the 
same number of generations, from John Cotton : 

1. John Cotton, b. in England, 1585, m. (2d) Sarah Hankredge, of 

Boston, England, widow of WilUam Story. Came to Boston, 1633. 

2. John Cotton, b. in Boston, Mass., 1639, m. Joanna Rossiter. 

3. Rowland Cotton, b. in Pljonouth, 1667, m. Elizabeth Saltonstall, 

widow of Rev. John Denison. 

4. Joanna Cotton, b. in Sand\vich, 1719, m. Rev. John Brown, of 

Haverhill, Mass. (H. C. 1714). 

5. Abigail Brown, b. in , m. Rev. Edward Brooks, of Medford. 

6. Joanna Cotton Brooks, b. in , 1772, m. Nathaniel Hall, of 

Medford. 

7. Caroline Hall, b. in Medford, 1794, m. Rev. Francis Parkman, of 

Boston. 

8. Francis Parkman, b. in Boston, 1823. 

(From Memoir of Francis Parkman, by Edward Wheelwright, in 
Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. i. pp. 304-305.) 



INTRODUCTORY 6 

at "Worcester; other portions have been distributed 
among his descendants. Its quaint humor was a 
never-ceasing delight to his great-grandson, the 
historian." ^ 

This excellent divine was worthy of tlie colonial 
times, not only for his masterful spirit, but also in 
being the father of sixteen children. His third son, 
William, was the boy of seventeen who is mentioned 
by Lowell, and who at Ticonderoga, in 1758, as Park- 
man tells us, " kept in his knapsack a dingy little 
notebook in which he jotted down what passed each 
day." Another son, Breck, was one of the minute 
men who marched from Westborough on the 19th of 
April, 1775. 

Samuel Parkraan, the twelfth child of this minis- 
ter, was the grandfather of the historian. He came 
to Boston as a poor boy, and by his assiduity and 
talent rose to eminence and opulence among the 
merchants of Boston. He was a liberal benefactor 
of Harvard University. 

The Rev. Francis Parkman, father of the historian, 
was born in Boston in 1788, graduated from Harvard 
in 1807, repeived the degree of Sanctce Tlieologice Doc- 
tor in 1843, and was installed in 1813 as pastor of 
the New North Church in Boston, corner of Hanover 
and Clark streets. This charge he retained to the 
end of his pastorate in 1849. From 1819 to 1849 he 
was one of the Overseers of Harvard University. He 
added a donation to his father's gift to the College, 

1 Mr. Wheelwright's Memoir. 



4 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

and tlius helped to found the Parkman Professorship 
of Theology. As a student he showed " a strong 
desire for knowledge and an aptitude to avail 
himself of all means which presented for general 
improvement." ^ 

''Every aspect of suffering touched him tenderly. 
There was no hard spot in his breast. His house was 
the centre of countless mercies to various forms of want; 
and there were few solicitors of alms, local or itinerant, 
and whether for private necessity or public benefactions, 
that his doors did not welcome and send away satisfied. 
Tlie processes of his mind were practical, however, rather 
than speculative. His style was not wanting in force, 
but distinguished rather for clearness and ease. For many 
years he has been widely known and esteemed for his 
efficient interest in some of our most conspicuous and 
useful institutions of philanthropy. Harvard Univer- 
sity . . . was very near to his heart, and its concerns 
touched his personal pride." ^ 

Another writer says of him : 

''Whether he conversed on theology or politics or man- 
ners or individual character, or recorded some sad or 
pleasant experience of his own, the wise and genial 
humorist was always observable, softening, enlivening, 
enriching everything he touched; his practical discern- 
ments were so sure and keen, his knowledge of the world 
was so extensive and his perception of character and 
motives was so quick and deep that it was impossible to 
impose on him by any pretense or deception." ^ 

1 Dr. Isaac Hurd. 2 Bishop Huntington. 

3 Edvrin P. Whipple. 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

Lowell says of him : ^ 

''He still survives in traditions of an abundant and 
exquisite humor, provoked to wilder hazards, and set in 
stronger relief (as in Sterne) by the decorum of his 
cloth." 

His genial temper, however, was often shadowed 
by attacks of melancholy. In spite of a nature that 
was generous, free even to eccentricity in certain 
directions, he was very conservative in feeling and 
opinions, — an excellent Bostonian of those days. 

When he died, in 1852, the Boston Association 
celebrated him as "one who loved his calling and 
discharged all its duties with mitiring devotedness. 
As a preacher he was practical and evangelical ; as' 
a pastor tender and affectionate. He was a man of 
active and useful charities, a friend to learning, a 
punctual member or an energetic officer of many 
literary, philanthropic, and religious associations, as 
well as a true friend of the worthy poor." One of 
the best tributes paid to him was Dr. Ephraim Pea- 
body's saying that he was particularly kind to the 
unattractive. And finally, it is pleasant to add that 
"He was a kind and indulgent father, and though 
he did not sympathize with all his son's aspirations 
and pursuits, he never thwarted or opposed them." ^ 

Francis Parkman's maternal branch sprang from 
the good old Puritans, John Cotton of Boston and 
of Plymouth. His great-grandfather was the Rev. 

1 The Century, November, 1892. 

2 Mr. Wheelwright's Memoir, 



6 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

Edward Brooks, of Medford, Massachusetts, who 
graduated at Harvard in 1757, aud was "called to 
the church at North Yarmouth, Maine, where, how- 
ever, he remained only five years, having been dis- 
missed on account of his too liberal views." ^ Tliis 
is the only person among Parkman's ancestors who 
is mentioned as having liberal tendencies. " On the 
19th of April, 1775, he went over to Lexington, on 
horseback, with his gun on his shoulder, and in his 
full-bottomed wig."^ His chief exploit on that 
eventful day appears to have been saving the life 
of a wounded British officer. Parkman records that 
through the sister of Peter Chardon Brooks he liim- 
self shared in the Huguenot blood that often played 
so prominent a part in the history of New England. 

Parkman derived more traits from his mother than 
from any other of his ancestors. She was Caroline, 
daughter of Nathaniel Hall, of Medford, Massachu- 
setts. Mr. Frothingham wrote of her : ^ " She was 
a fine example of the best type of New England 
woman . . . She was a Unitarian by inheritance, but 
quite uninterested in speculative or dogmatic matters. 
With questions of doctrine she did not concern her- 
self, and took no part in the controversies that were 
raging around her, though she had a profound re- 
spect for spiritual things and an undoubting faith 
in the cardinal principles of religion. Her devotion 

1 Mr. Wheelwright's Memoir. 
' Peter Chardon Brooks. 

3 Francis Parkman, by the Key. 0. B. Frothingham, Boston, 
1894. Proceedings of the Hist. Soc. of Mass., vol. viii. p. 521. 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

to her husband and children was with her a sacred 
duty. Humility, charity, truthfulness were her prime 
characteristics. Her conscience was firm and lofty, 
though never austere. She had a strong sense of 
right, coupled with perfect charity toward other 
people; inflexible in principle, she was gentle in 
practice. Intellectually she could hardly be called 
brilliant or accomplished, but she had a strong vein 
of common sense and practical wisdom, great pene- 
tration into character, and a good deal of quiet 
humor." And Miss Parkman says of her : " She 
had a strong unselfish and gentle nature, a calm and 
steady temperament, with deep feeling, yet great, 
though never cold reserve. She had abundant com- 
mon sense and excellent judgment, great penetra- 
tion in discerning character, shrewd and humorous, 
but never sharp in her criticism of it. She was too 
retiring and self-distrustful to share her husband's 
marked social tastes, but in her large circle of friends 
and relations she was a great favorite. She was very 
simple in her tastes, loved her home, and never 
wanted to leave it, and was its centre, the sure and 
loving dependence of all in it. The strength and 
sweetness of her nature were all expressed in her 
face. Whatever characteristics Frank inherited from 
his parents came from her. He was like her in 
many ways, and the expression of his face grew more 
and more like hers. She had, I think, always a 
peculiar tenderness toward him, her oldest child." 
Mrs. Parkman brought into the family most fortu- 



8 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARIvMAN" 

nate elements, — a mental steadiness and moral ear- 
nestness that elevated and purified as much as it 
sweetened. 

This superficial account of Parkman's ancestry, 
is, however, almost useless, nor would a much fuller 
one help us where we most desire help, — in compre- 
hending the personality we are about to study ; our 
data and insight are still utterly inadequate to a 
solution of the mysteries of heredity, and we can- 
not trace many of Parkman's peculiarities to their 
sources. Yet there is a certain interest, if no cer- 
tain knowledge, in these glimpses ; they enable us 
to mark some traits that might be overlooked with- 
out such hints to arouse and direct curiosity. They 
will enable us to see how vigorously and independ- 
ently he disagreed with many of the tendencies and 
traditions of his family ; how, on the other hand, he 
faithfully adhered to many of them ; and again, how 
he often wished to free himself from some of the 
most fimdamental inherited forces of his character. 

A biography to be worth anything should have its 
basis in a thorough knowledge of the subject's char- 
acter, since all the practical accomplishments of his 
life spring from that source. The fundamentals of 
his physical and mental being are the only keys to 
his aims, tastes, abilities, limitations, and achieve- 
ments. We need these keys at the start, justly to 
appreciate, as we go along, the life to be described. 
Parkman's physical organism was strangely com- 
pounded of strength and weakness. It lacked that 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

equilibrium of forces which secures health and makes 
consecutive labor possible. His eyes failed him in 
college, and ever afterwards refused their usual ser- 
vice ; his brain was affected by some disorder that 
limited, and often entirely prevented intellectual 
activity; in short, he had to endure a great deal of 
pain and suffering nearly all his life. In the inti- 
mate question of the body's relation to mental action, 
it must be noted that his senses were not highly 
developed ; he was more or less insensible to delicate 
impressions from sound, color, odors, taste, and touch. 
His physical organism thus imposed on him many 
limitations, although it gave him the advantages of 
exceptional energy, a great love of activity, and a 
very tenacious vitality and power of endurance.^ 

The mental make-up of the man corresponded with 
his physical development, his character being marked 
by a few simple and elementary powers rather than 
by delicacy, subtlety, and variety of sensibilities and 
emotions. His entire personality was moulded by 
the master quality of manliness. Impetuosity, cour- 
age, honesty, energy, reserve, a practical turn of 
mind, and an iron will were his chief forces. A lack 

^ " In personal appearance Mr. Parkman was distinctly notice- 
able. He was about five feet eleven in height, square-shouldered, 
and firm-set. He had a strong, clear-cut face, always closely shaved, 
with a chin and jaw of marked vigor of outline. His forehead was 
rugged and broad ; his whole carriage and expression was that of a 
modest but resolute man, capable, spite of whatever drawbacks 
and infirmities, of hard work and the persistent prosecution of 
difficult undertakings." (E. L. Godkin, in the New York Evening 
Post, Nov. 9, 1893.) 



10 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

of certain elements of spirituality constituted his 
chief defect ; a matter to be more fully dwelt on in 
a later chapter. 

These, then, were the raw materials of the human 
entity, Francis Parkman — the marble that his gifts, 
ambition, and experience were to carve into the his- 
torian, the citizen, the friend, the father. 



CHAPTER II 

CHRONOLOGICAL 

Feancis Pakkman", eldest son of the Rev. Francis 
Parkman and Caroline (Hall) Parkman, was born in 
Boston, Mass., on tlie 16tli of September, 1823. He 
was born in a house that still exists, though much 
altered, — the " Lyndhurst," No. 4A AUston Street. 
About 1829 the family moved to No. 1 Green Street, 
where they resided until about 1838, when they took 
possession of the house that Samuel Parkman, the 
historian's grandfather, had built for himself. This 
stately colonial mansion, No. 5 Bowdoin Square, was 
one of the landmarks of Boston. 

" It was an excellent specimen of the Colonial resi- 
dences once so common in and around Boston, a large 
square house, three stories in height, and built of brick. 
. . . Within was a fine entrance hall, and a noble stair- 
case with spiral balusters. When the house was demol- 
ished the historian caused these balusters to be removed, 
and placed on the stairs of the house which he built for 
himself at Jamaica Plain. . . . There was a 'front yard' 
enclosed by a light and simple iron fence with tall square 
pillars at the corners. In the rear was a large paved 
courtyard, and beyond that, where the land sloped rapidly 
to the north, a garden, divided into terraces, one 



12 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARIvMAN 

below the other, and devoted to the cultivation of fruits 
rather than of flowers. The flavor of a certain choice va- 
riety of bergamot pear which grew there still lingers in 
the memory of those who were ever so fortunate as to 
taste it." ^ 

Later we see Parkman as a child from eight to thir- 
teen years of age, living on his grandfather's farm at 
Medford, where he developed his love of nature by 
roaming the woods of the Middlesex Fells; and 
again as a schoolboy, serious over his books in the 
Chauncy Hall School, or with equal earnestness 
studying nature more intimately in chemistry and 
the natural sciences. 

In 1840 he entered Harvard College in the class of 
'44. During his college course he devoted himself 
with ardor and concentration to his special interests, 
— the study of rhetoric and history, the pursuit of 
physical development, and a knowledge of the 
American wilderness. His diaries of these years 
enable us to follow his vacation trips to the wilds of 
New England and localities of historical interest; 
but no record offers much information as to the 
formative forces of his life. In his freshman year he 
"chummed" with his classmate Benjamin Apthorp 
Gould in No. 9 Holworthy Hall. After that he had 
a room to himself, — a condition better suited to his 
reserved and studious nature. When sophomore he 
lived at Mrs. Ayers's on the corner of Garden Street 
and the Appian Way ; in the junior year he lived in 
1 Wheelwright. 



CHRONOLOGICAL 13 

24 Massachusetts Hall, during the senior year in 21 
of the same building. 

For the first year of his law course, 1844-5, he 
occupied No. 7 Divinity Hall ; after that date he 
generally lived with his parents, until his marriage 
in 1850. 

It was in 1841 that he began the researches and 
experiences that were to fit him for his work, making 
his first trip to the wilderness with Daniel D. Slade, 
passing through Portsmouth to Alton, thence along 
Lake Winnipesaukee to Centre Harbor; on to the 
Notch and up Mount Washington; thence to Franconia 
Notch, Lancaster, Colebrook, Dixville Notch, thence 
to the Androscoggin river near the mouth of the 
Magalloway, and up this river to its junction with 
the Little Magalloway. 

The next year, in company with Henry Orne 
White, he made a second trip to the Magalloway. 
They passed through Albany, Saratoga, and Glens 
Falls to Lake George. After studying the battle- 
fields about Caldwell they hired a rowboat and spent 
a week camping along the shores of the lake, — fish- 
ing, shooting, climbing mountains, and hunting rattle- 
snakes. At Sabbath Day Point he tarried a day to 
gather from an old Revolutionary pensioner, Captain 
Patchen, traditions connected with the region. After 
a careful examination of Ticonderoga the two crossed 
Lake Champlain to Burlington, and there began 
their walk to Canada and the head- waters of the 
Magalloway. They passed through Essex, Jericho, 



14 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

Underhill, Cambridge, Johnson, Troy, Stanstead, 
Barnston and Canaan, and finally readied Connecti- 
cut Lake. From this point onward their journey is 
described in " Harper's Magazine " for November, 
1864. Parkman often expressed a particular fondness 
for Lake George ; it was perhaps, after his home, the 
corner of the earth most dear to him. As the object 
of his fu'st literary pilgrimage, it stirred his imagina- 
tion strongly both by its beautiful scenery and its 
exceptional wealth of historical traditions. 

In the winter vacation of 1843 he visited his class- 
mates Hale and Perry, at Keene, N. H. 

"It was doubtless with recollections of this visit and 
of others in his mind, that in the last published volume 
of his histories, Parkman speaks of Keene as ' a town 
noted in rural New England for kindly hospitality, cul- 
ture without pretence, and good breeding without con- 
ventionality.' ^ His two classmates were not the only 
acquaintances he had in this delightful New Hampshire 
town. Two years before, while with Slade in the White 
Mountains, he had fallen in with a lively party of travel- 
lers from this place, and one young lady in particular had 
charmed him by the laughing philosophy' with which 
she had taken ' a ducking' in his company while passing 
through the Notch on the stage and in a pouring rain. 
Still more was he pleased by the ' strength and spirit and 
good-humor ' she had shown in the ascent of Mount Wash- 
ington. With this lady, who afterwards married a dis- 
tinguished citizen of her native State, ^ Parkman kept up 
a lifelong friendship." 

1 A Half Century, vol. ii. p. 230. 2 Wheelwright. 



CHRONOLOGICAL 15 

There is no reference in diaries or letters of 1843 
to any journey to the wilderness. But he made a 
trip to Canada for historical materials, examining 
again on the way the battlefields of Lake George 
and Lake Champlain, going on to St. Johns and 
Chambly, and visiting Montreal. He gathered notes 
of the Hope Gate and other important localities at 
Quebec, and on his way back to Boston through the 
White Mountains, noted many stories of frontier life 
and border warfare. Perhaps it was at this time 
that he made the trip to which he refers in " Mont- 
calm and Wolfe " : 

"I once, when a college student, followed on foot the 
route of Rogers from Lake Memphremagog to the Con- 
necticut." 

He then went to Maine to study the Indians near 
Bangor and to collect the traditions of their wars 
with the Mohawks. This vacation was evidently 
something else than the collegian's usual season of 
idleness. This nineteenth summer of his life, the 
beginning of his exclusive devotion to historical 
labors, witnessed the birth of the deep enthusiasm 
that later overcame such remarkable obstacles, and 
infused his persistent industry with heroism. 

In September he visited Europe, making the tour 
we shall follow in his diaries. 

In 1844, after a creditable though not brilliant 
college career, he graduated from Harvard and 
entered the Harvard Law School. 



16 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

"He was a member, while in college, of the Institute 
of 1770, of the I. 0. H., of the Hasty Pudding Club, — 
of which he was successively Vice-President and Presi- 
dent, — of the Harvard Natural History Society, — of 
which he was CorresiDonding and Recording Secretary 
and Curator of Mineralogy, — of the C. C. or Chit-Chat, 
of the short-lived R. T. D., and of the Phi Beta Kappa." ^ 

The vacations of this year he devoted to historical 
research. Taking his rifle he tramped alone over the 
hills of western Massachusetts, to study the routes 
followed by the French and Indians in their attacks 
on that region. He passed through Springfield, 
Cabotsville, Chester Factory, Lee, Stockbridge, Great 
Barrington, Mount Washington, Lebanon Springs, 
Stephentown, The Hopper and North Adams. 

The diary of 1845 shows that he had now focussed 
his ambitions on a definite work — the Conspiracy of 
Pontiac. In April of that year he made a trip to St. 
Louis, and spent the summer in collecting materials 
for this volume. He visited Lancaster, Paradise, 
Harrisburg, Williamsport, Trout Run, Blossburg, 
Corning, Seneca Lake, Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit, 
Windsor, Sandwich, Mackinaw, Sault Ste. Marie, 
Palmer, Newport, Niagara, the Devil's Hole, Fort 
Niagara, Oswego, Syracuse and Onondaga Castle. 
In all these journeys he showed indefatigable energy 
and alertness, and while his main interest was histor- 
ical research, in which pursuit he noted the scenery 
of historic places, examined family papers and other 

1 Wheehrright's Class of 18U, P- 162. 



CHRONOLOGICAL 17 

documents, and wherever it was possible interviewed 
descendants of the actors in his historic drama, his 
diary reveals almost as much of interest in nature, 
human nature, and civilization. The sketches he 
contributed to the "Knickerbocker Magazin,e" ^ 
show something of these tendencies crystallized in 
literary forms. 

In the winter of 1846 he made a trip through Penn- 
sylvania, visiting Trenton, Philadelphia, Washing- 
ton, Baltimore, Harrisburg, Carlisle, Chambersburg 
and Pittsburg. This 5'^ear is marked also by his most 
adventurous and important expedition, the trip of the 
Oregon Trail. 

His classmate, Mr. Wheelwright, has given us 
the following glimpse of Parkman's social life in 
college : 

^'His boarding-place during the greater part of his 
College course was at Mrs. Schutte's, a lady who kept 
an excellent table at what was thought a very moderate 
price even in those days. The company was numerous, 
comprising representatives of all the classes. Much 
lively and interesting talk went on there, at and after 
meals, and not a little good-natured chaffing. Almost all 
the guests had some soubriquet conferred upon them, more 
or less indicative of their characters, or of some peculiar- 
ity of appearance or manner. Some of these, from their 
happy appropriateness, soon spread beyond the coterie 
where they originated, and have even clung to their re- 
cipients through life. Such was not the case with that 

^ See the list of his works in Appendix. 
2 



18 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

bestowed upon Mr. Parkman. From being oftener an 
amused listener to conversation than an active parti- 
cipant in it, he was called lucus a non lucendo, * The 
Loquacious,' a title so absurdly inappropriate that his 
college friends to-day recall it with difficulty. Far from 
being the unsocial character this ironical nickname would 
imply, Mr. Parkman keenly enjoyed the society of his 
fellaw-students. Never boisterous in his mirth, he was 
by no means averse to taking part in merrymakings and 
festivities. He was catholic in his likings, and had 
already begun to develop that keen insight into char- 
acter which is one of the striking features of his his- 
torical writings. He could penetrate within the outer 
covering of mannerisms and affectations, and see the man 
himself. He enjoyed with equal zest the wild exuber- 
ance of William Morris Hunt and the placid philosophy 
of George Blankern Gary. He took a lively interest in 
all that went on in College, and was always ready to do 
his share in protesting against abuses and redressing 
wrongs. An instance of this is recorded in the contem- 
porary journal of a classmate. At one time, in the 
Sophomore year, the Latin professor. Dr. Beck, adopted 
the arbitrary and novel practice of calling the roll in 
his recitation-room at precisely the hour, instead of five 
minutes after, as had been the immemorial custom, and 
also of marking as absent all who simply came late. 
Parkman thereupon drew up a memorial, remonstrating 
against the innovation, obtained the signatures of the 
princij)al members of the class, and sent it to the Fac- 
ulty. And the remonstrance had the desired effect." . . . 
** Though rather fond of calling upon his classmates, with 
whom he was always popular, he rarely asked them to 



CHRONOLOGICAL 19 

visit him in return. One reason probably was that he was 
very little in his own room, except at night for the pur- 
pose of sleeping. His constant craving for bodily exer- 
cise kept him out-of-doors or at the gymnasium the 
greater part of the day. Moreover, as is now known, 
he had already begun to read such books as he thought 
suited to help him toward the attainment of his great 
object, already well outlined in his mind. He did not 
care to have these secret studies interrupted by chance 
callers, who might also discover in his room some traces 
of the ' lucubrations ' which he says he pursued at this 
time 'with a pernicious intensity,' keeping his plans and 
purposes to himself, while passing among his companions 
as an outspoken fellow." -^ 

Parkman's reserve as to his literary ambition was 
somewhat exceptional. He not only published his 
first productions anonymously, but he persistently 
denied any such ambition as late as 1845. In the 
following letter to his classmate, George S. Hale, 
he said: 

CAMBRroGE, Dec. 15, '44. 
Dear George, — Here am I, down in Divinity Hall (!) 
enjoying to my heart's content that otium cum dignitate 
which you so affectionately admire ; while you, poor 
devil, are being jolted in English coaches, or suffering 
the cramp in both legs on the banquette of a French 
diligence. Do you not envy me in my literary ease ? — 
a sea-coal fire — a dressing-gown — slippers — a favorite 
author; all set off by an occasional bottle of champagne, 
or a bowl of stewed oysters at Washburn's ? This is the 
1 Wheelwright. 



20 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

cream of existence. To lay abed in the morning, till 
the sun has half melted away the trees and castles on 
the window-panes, and Nigger Lewis's fire is almost 
burnt out, listening meanwhile to the steps of the 
starved Divinities as they rush shivering and panting 
to their prayers and recitations — then to get up to a 
fashionable breakfast at eleven — then go to lecture — 
find it a little too late, and adjourn to Joe Peabody's 
room, for a novel, conversation, and a morning glass of 
madeira — while you are puckering your lips over bad 
vin ordinaire in a splendid cafe, and screaming gar^on 
in vain hope of relief. If I am not mistaken, George, 
this is leading a happier life, by your own showing, than 
to be encountering the hard knocks and vexations of a 
traveller's existence. After all, man was made to be 
happy; ambition is a humbug — a dream of youth j and 
exertion another; leave those to Freshmen and divinities. 
I think the morbid tendency to unnecessary action passes 
away as manhood comes on; at any rate, I have never 
been half so quiescent as since I was qualified to vote 
against Polk and Dallas. 

Perhaps you may imagine me under some vinous influ- 
ence in writing thus. Not at all; yet if I had written 
this a few nights ago, perhajis it might have smacked 
more of inspiration. We had a class spree! where, if 
there was not much wit, there was, as the Vicar of 
Wakefield says, a great deal of laughing, not to mention 
singing, roaring, and unseemly noises of a miscellaneous 
character. There was Gould, and Farnsworth, Wild, 
Batchelder, and numbers more of the same renown. Joe 
also gave an entertainment not long ago, where, if there 
was not so much noise made, there were better jokes 



CHRONOLOGICAL 21 

cracked and better champagne opened. And now, what 
are you doing; a cup of coffee at Very's, perhaps; then 
a lounge, quizzing glass at eye, in the Louvre, followed 
by a ditto on the Italian Boulevard, and a fifty-franc 
dinner at the Trois Freres. What supplement shall I 
add to this? You will not be sorry, I dare say, to hear 
a word of some brethren of your nodes ambi^osiance, 
though I imagine that those nodes do not now appear 
very ambrosial on the retrospect. Hale vibrates between 
Law and Gospel. I fear the chances are a little in favor 
of the Devil. Snow is established in Graduates' Hall, 
with two pianos, Shelley, and a half-cask of ale. He now 
and then appears at the one o'clock lecture, rubbing his 
eyes and gaping. Clarke is here, taking boxing lessons. 
Ned is in town, a counter-jumper by darj, and a literary 
character by night; on the way to make a very sensible 
and accomplished man. Perry has been hunting deer and 
killing partridges, and would fain persuade a quiet fellow 
like me to leave Cambridge and join him; but I preferred 
a pleasant fireside. Old Treadwell is splashing about in 
the muddy waters of politics and law. Our brothers, 
whilom of X X, accused me in the beginning of the term 
of an intention of authorship! probably taking the hint 
from the circumstance of my never appearing till eleven 
o'clock, a la Scott; but I believe they no longer suspect 
me of so ill advised an intention. It would run a little 
counter to my present principles, though I do remember 

the time when G. B. C. meditated the Baron of B ; 

and Snow felt sure (in his cups) of being Captain General 
of Transatlantic literature, while your humble servant's 
less soaring ambition aspired to the manufacture of blood 
and thunder chronicles of Indian squabbles and massa- 



22 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PAROIAN 

cres. But I have discovered a new vein of talent, which 
I think you did not suspect. In fact, / did not dream 
I could play the hypocrite so well as to deceive your dis- 
cerning eye, on my return from Europe. I think I did, 
however : and I believe you embarked in the impression 
that foreign travel had wasted all its charms on my 
incorrigible idiosyncrasy. You will answer this, will 
you not ? I am very eager to hear from you. ^ 
Yours truly, 

F. Pakkman. 

Parkman still concealed the master passion of 
his soul when writing to another of his most intimate 
friends, the next year : 

''By the way, what do you mean by charging me (for 
the fourth time, is it ?) with a design to write a novel, or 
a poem, or an essay, or whatever it is ? Allow me to tell 
you that though the joke may be good, it is certainly 
old. ... If you catch me writing anything of the sort, you 
might call me a ' darned fool ' with great propriety as 
well as elegance." ^ 

In a.nswer to his friend's charge of deception, he 
wrote : 

' ' He [a mutual friend] tells me besides that you 
threaten me with vengeance for deceiving you as to my 
intention of 'publication,' to which charge I most em- 
phatically plead not guilty, and deprecate your wrath. I 
think an occasional 'posterior,' as Perry calls them, in 
the ' Knickerbocker ' will hardly put me in the predica- 

1 Letter to G. B. Gary. 

2 To G. S. Hale, Feb. 13, 1845. 



CHRONOLOGICAL 23 

ment of a publislier, and I did not suspect that ' literary 
intentions ' had with you so comprehensive a signifi- 
cation." ^ 

Although the following letter is not important for 
its contents, it has a certain interest as the only auto- 
biograpliic offset to the Spartan spirit that ruled his 
life. 

He wrote to G. S. Hale, Nov. 24, 1844 : 

"We wanted you the other night. Joe got up one of 
his old-fashioned suppers, on a scale of double magnifi- 
cence, inviting thereunto every specimen of the class of 
'44 that lingered within an accessible distance. There 
was old S. and Snaggy, N". D., Ned W. (who, by the way, 
is off for Chili !), P., etc., etc. The spree was worthy of 
the entertainment. None got drunk, but all got jolly; 
and Joe's champagne disappeared first; then his madeira; 
and his whiskey punch would have followed suit, if its 
copious supplies had not prevented. At first, all was 
quiet and dignified, not unworthy of graduates; but at 
length the steam found vent in three cheers for '44, and 
after that we did not cease singing and roaring till one 
o'clock. Even my hideous voice grew musical; I suc- 
ceeded in actually singing in the chorus to ' Yankee 
Doodle,' without perceptibly annoying the rest. At 
length, all deserted, except a chosen few. Old S. sat 
on the rocking-chair, with one foot on the table, and the 
other on his neighbor's shoulder, laughing and making 
execrable puns. He had the key of the door in his pocket 
Bo that nobody could get out. The whole ended with 
smashing a dozen bottles against the Washington [word 
1 To G. S. Hale, April 24, 1845. 



24 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

illegible], and a war-dance with scalp-yells in the middle 
of the Common, in the course of which several night- 
capped heads appeared at the opened windows of the 
astonished neighbors." 

As Parkman was already guided by the literary 
ambition that governed his entire career, we can 
appropriately take that purpose as the thread on 
which to string the facts of his subsequent external 
life. Such a course is all the clearer since he rarely 
made a journey or undertook any labor disconnected 
from his work. But unfortunately there is little 
material out of which to spin this tln'ead, and the 
thread itself is rarely met with in our scanty 
biographical details. 

At the close of the year 1846 he had seen most of 
the remnants of Indian tribes to be found from Maine 
to the Rocky Mountains, visited nearly all the locali- 
ties connected with his theme, and gathered what 
could be procured of family papers and traditions, 
besides official and published documents. Thus he 
had made a good beginning in the collection of 
materials for his great work when hardly more than 
out of college. Early in his researches he had in 
view not only the general theme of the Old French 
War, but the special topic of the Conspiracy of Pon- 
tiac. Although this subject was the last one in his 
epoch of history, he wrote it the first, — perhaps re- 
garding it as easier to deal with than the others, and 
more certain of success because of its picturesqueness. 

Finding his health in a deplorable state at the 



CHRONOLOGICAL 25 

close of liis Oregon Trail journey, he devoted liimself 
largely to medical treatment during 1847 and 1848. 
He spent the greater part of these years in New 
York and at West New Brighton on Staten Island, 
under the care of an oculist, also at a water cure in 
E rattleboro, Vt., to improve his general health. But 
literary ambition was not to be put aside on account 
of illness and poor sight. With the help of friendly 
eyes and hands he first dictated " The Oregon Trail " 
in the autumn of 1846, then took up " Pontiac." A 
gentleman ^ who as a boy knew Parkman when the 
latter lived on Staten Island, gives me these recollec- 
tions of him: 

'MYith regard to Frank Parkman, I do remember him 
very distinctly when he was down here for treatment of 
his eyes about 1847. 

" At the same time were gathered there for the same 
purpose — my father's ministrations — a goodly number of 
disenchanted dreamers of Brook Farm, then in process of 
disintegration — Mr. Dana, Mr. Ripley, and many others 
less experimentally philanthropic or more purely literary, 
among whom were Longfellow, Willis, Morris, while for 
a time the Rev. Charles Lowell, his son James, and his 
daughters were, with Professor Youmans, members of the 
household. 

"Frank Parkman, or 'Cousin Frank,' as he was called 
by the Shaw family, was a great favorite with the boys ; 
with whom he played and to whom he told wondrous tales 
of adventure by field and flood — he having recently re- 
turned from one of his frontier expeditions. Later his 
1 Dr. S. K. ElUott. 



26 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

stories began to vary from the strictly historical, and to 
take on the guise of fictions. And at last one evening 
when we were out rowing on the river in front of our 
house ' Cousin Frank ' told of a frightful struggle which 
he and his companions had with sharks, in the Bay of 
California, which lasted over two hours and during which 
he and his two companions — Mexican pearl divers — 
were in 90 feet of water, so that when the party reached 
the surface, they were all nearly out of breath. We boys 
looked at each other silently for a while, until Bob Shaw, 
who being a relation was less shy of speech — did ejacu- 
late ' g'long ' ! so forcibly that the passage from the credi- 
ble to the incredible was recognized. On another occasion 
— also in the boat — he told us about a row among the 
animals at an Eastern menagerie, during which he had 
tied the trunk to the tail of the biggest and most savage 
elephant, under his belly, till he surrendered by holding 
up his paw and jiurring. We were never quite sure after 
that whether the tales of adventure so freely narrated 
were meant to be taken literally or not, as 'Cousin 
Frank's ' face gave no outward or visible sign for grave or 
gay. . . . He was an excellent talker among his peers, 
the adults, and we boys liked him even better than James 
Russell Lowell, who had taken more notice of our adoles- 
cence, but who somehow appeared condescending and 
Bostony to our untutored fancy." 

He returned to his father's house in 1849, having 
reaped but little benefit from the efforts of the doc- 
tors — the " medical faculty," as he used to call them. 
With the help of his friend, Charles Eliot Norton, in 
reading proof, he was able to prepare " The Oregon 



CHRONOLOGICAL 2T 

Trail" for publication in book form. In 1850 he 
married Catherine Scollay,.a daughter of Dr. Jacob 
Bigelow. His marriage was a very happy one, yet 
this epoch of his life was not free from severe strain. 
With a small income — up to the death of his father 
in 1852 — he found some difficulty in meeting the 
expenses of a domestic establishment and those of 
historical research. His first home was a cottao-e, 
still standing on Dorchester Avenue, at Milton Lower 
Falls; afterward he occupied for a year or two a 
house in Brookline, on Cottage Street, generally 
spending the winter season in Boston with his par- 
ents or his father-in-law. When at the death of his 
father he came into the possession of money, he 
bought about three acres of land on the shore of 
Jamaica Pond. Here was the cottage which he oc- 
cupied for half the year until he rebuilt it in 1874 ; 
and he continued to live there through the summer 
and autumn for the rest of his life. In 1853 " the 
enemy " again became too aggressive to be ignored, 
and again he resorted to water-cure, at Northampton. 
He was always willing to give the doctors every 
facility and to undergo any method of treatment, 
following faithfully the advice he sought — except- 
ing in regard to giving up writing. 

Meanwhile, with the help of his wife and her sis- 
ter, Miss Mary Bigelow, as amanuensis, he pushed 
along his literary labors. As soon as " Pontiac " was 
off his hands — 1851 — he began collecting materials 
for his historical series, and also wrote a few reviews 



28 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

of historical works for tlie " Christian Examiner." He 
now tried his hand at fiction, publishing " Vassal 
Morton " in 1856. In this year he made a trip to 
Montreal, Quebec, and Nova Scotia. 

But even this limited and precarious activity was 
greatly hindered and finally arrested ; for arthritis at- 
tacked one of his knees in 1851, and by depriving him 
of his usual walks greatly impaired his general powers. 
Horseback riding relieved him to some degree, but 
even this was not always possible. His family now 
numbered tliree children: Grace, born in 1851, Fran- 
cis, born in 1854, and Katharine, in 1858. The first 
great bereavement of his life fell with the death of 
his promising son in 1857. The next year profound 
grief again came upon him in the loss of his wife. 
His sister-in-law, Miss Bigelow, now took his daugh- 
ters to her home, and relieved him of personal respon- 
sibility as to the care and education of them. This 
arrangement was the more fortunate since the state 
of his brain made it out of the question for him to 
work in anything but the utmost quietness, or to 
occupy himself with the details of domestic economy. 
But he enjoyed having his children with him a por- 
tion of each year, and made himself very companion- 
able to them. As one was of a jovial, and the other 
of a more philosophical turn, he used to say that he 
had one daughter for his amusement, the other for 
his instruction. 

Shortly after the death of his wife he went abroad, 
and spent the winter of 1858-59 in Paris, at the 



CHRONOLOGICAL 29 

H8tel de France et de Bath. His brain was then in 
such a condition that the most eminent specialists of 
Paris warned him against insanity and forbade him 
all literary labor; but while spending his time chiefly 
in observing the life of the streets from the tops of 
omnibuses, he yet managed to make some investiga- 
tions in the archives, and to arrange for the copying 
of documents. Returning to Boston without any 
improvement in his alarming condition, he joined the 
family of his mother and sisters, living with them in 
winter, at No. 8 "Walnut Street until 1864, and 
thenceforth at No. 50 Chestnut Street. They in 
turn passed the summer with him on the shores of 
Jamaica Pond. 

Parkman was now approaching the worst epoch of 
his life. The condition of his brain made the least 
literary labor suicidal ; he was called upon to face the 
certainty of permanent invalidism and the probability 
of never reaching the goal of his ambition. The way 
in which he met "the enemy" was characteristic of 
his courage, cheerfulness, and common sense. Out 
of the most depressing circumstances he not only 
wrung a notable success in the conduct of his life, 
but contributed greatly to the happiness of others. 
Seeing the temple of fame closed against him, he 
turned to Nature for consolation. Horticulture be- 
came his exclusive occupation for several years — 
until his health permitted him to resume his pen. 
His success in this field is the more noteworthy, be- 
cause he had neither scientific training nor much 



30 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

money to devote to the undertaking. After mastering 
the principles of the science by reading, he threw into 
gardening the same ardor and painstaking persever- 
ance that subsequently carried him to success in 
writing history. He was not long in surpassing his 
neighbors who had the advantage of him both in ma- 
terial means and experience. It is noteworthy that 
two other American historians, Bancroft and Prescott, 
turned their attention to gardening and became cele- 
brated as growers of roses. 

Parkman prepared liis grounds for horticulture 
by building a greenhouse, making beds, and planting 
trees and shrubbery. He employed a good gardener 
and one or two subordinates to till the soil, but di- 
rected everj^thing himself, giving the closest attention 
to practical details. 

When able to walk, he would go at a rapid gait 
from place to place, and sit down on a stool carried 
for the purpose ; he would then do some of the lighter 
work, such as sowing seeds, planting borders, weeding, 
and cultivating. He often cut the grass of the bor- 
ders when sitting in his wheel chair, and used a rake 
or hoe in this inconvenient attitude. Sometimes the 
sensitiveness of his eyes prevented him from being 
out-of-doors in the sunlight ; yet in spite of all such 
opposing conditions, he soon became so well known 
among liis friends and neighbors as a successful 
grower of flowers that the Massachusetts Horticul- 
tural Society elected him a life member. His repu- 
tation brought him an important opportunity. In 



CHEONOLOGICAL 31 

1860 or 1861 Mr. Francis L. Lee, of Chestnut Hill, 
when enlisting for the war, turned over to Mr. Park- 
man, as the most competent person, a lot of plants and 
bulbs he had received from Japan and partially- 
brought to flowering — among them the lilium auratum 
and the Parkman Crab. Tliis stroke of fortune thus 
placed in his hands new and interesting materials, 
stimulated his ambition to further study, and laid a 
good part of the foundation of his fame as a horti- 
culturist. In 1862 the possibilities of the case in- 
duced him to form a partnership with a horticulturist, 
with a view of purchasing more land and developing 
his gardening as a business venture. This scheme, 
however, was abandoned at the end of a year, though 
he thriftily turned his labors to some profit by selling 
plants. Persons who bought of him, still speak of 
the fairness and generosity of liis dealing and the 
excellence of his wares. 

Although Parkman cultivated a variety of flowers, 
he devoted himself chiefly to the growing of roses 
and the hybridization of lilies. It is said that he had 
at one time a thousand varieties of roses in his garden. 
His most important contribution to horticulture was 
the magnificent lilium Parkmanni^ which he sold in 
1876 to an English florist for a large sum. He 
brought out also new varieties of delphinium, phlox, 
poppy, and other flowers. His garden, especially in 
the season of flowering shrubs, delighted the eye by its 
wealth of blossom and glow of color. The flowers 
themselves rather than the study of arrangement and 



32 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

effect — wMcli did not so much interest him — made 
its great attraction. The Bussey Institute thought it 
worth while to publish a list of these when his prop- 
erty was taken by the city of Boston, as part of 
Jamaica Park. His eminence in horticulture is well 
attested. The reports of the Massachusetts Horti- 
cultural Society show that he received, between the 
years 1859 and 1884, no fewer than 326 awards — a 
large proportion being first prizes — besides one 
bronze and sixteen silver medals. In that society he 
served as Chairman of the Library Committee from 
1863 to 1874; he was Vice-President from 1871 to 
1874, and President from 1875 to 1878, when he had 
to decline re-election. He published a few articles in 
Tilton's " Journal of Horticulture " in 1867 to 1871. 
In 1866, at the request of a publisher, he wrote " The 
Book of Roses," which still holds its position as one of 
the best guides in the cultivation of that flower ; and he 
wrote a valuable paper on the hybridization of lilies.^ 
In 1871 Harvard appointed liim Professor of Horti- 
culture to the Bussey Institute — a position he 
resigned at the end of a year. His duties there were 
agreeable and not onerous : no prej)aration being 
needed to go twice a week to the greenhouses and talk 
to a class of young women about the cultivation of flow- 
ers. He gave up special efforts in horticulture about 
1884, when his lameness increased, and thereafter 
simply maintained his garden for the pleasure of it. 
He was generous with his flowers, glad to fill the hands 

1 Bulletin of the Bussey Institute, No. 15. 



CHRONOLOGICAL 33 

of any passer who showed an interest in them. He was 
very considerate of the feelings of his employees, and 
patient with them ; the humor of a blunder generally 
outweighed the annoyance of a mistake, but when 
really vexed he walked away in silence. 

Horticulture thus gave him his most intimate con- 
tact with nature ; it was indeed the only means by 
which his love came in from the wilderness to a 
homely and affectionate regard for individual objects. 
Parkman's general feeling towards gardening and the 
benefits he himself derived from it are well expressed 
in the following extract from his presidential address 
of 1875 : 

''You have placed me at the head of a society whose 
sole aim is the j)romotion of that gracious art which, 
through all time, has been the companion and the symbol 
of peace: an art joined in closest ties with Nature, and 
her helper in the daily miracle by which she works beauty 
out of foulness and life out of corruption ; an art so tran- 
quillizing and so benign; so rich in consolations and 
pleasures ; and one, too, which appeals to all mankind and 
finds votaries among rich and poor, learned and simple 
alike. Let us be grateful to the three deities who preside 
over these halls, and let us not fail to yield them a fitting 
homage. Horticulture, which in their serene and graceful 
trinity they combine to represent, is not one of the me- 
chanic arts. It is an art based on a science, or on several 
sciences. "When pursued in its highest sense and to its 
best results, it demands the exercise of a great variety of 
faculties, and gives scope to a high degree of mental 
activity. On the other side of the Atlantic, horticulture, 

3 



34 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

as a profession, stands to-day in a position of eminence. 
It has proved an avenue to social consideration and public 
honor. Ability, energy, and self-knowledge can lead men 
to distinction by the pathways of the garden as well as by 
the dusty road of what are rather invidiously called the 
learned professions . . . Horticulture, broadly pursued, 
is an education in itself, and no pursuit can surpass it in 
training the powers of observation and induction. The 
mind of the true cultivator is always on the alert to detect 
the working of principles and carry them to their practical 
application. To read the secrets of nature and aid her in 
her beneficent functions is his grateful and ennobling 
task." 

But we must return to tlie liistorian. His restric- 
tions now prevented him from doing much serious 
historical labor for fourteen years — from the publi- 
cation of " Pontiac " in 1851 to the appearance of 
Part I. of his series, " The Pioneers," in 1865. Dur- 
ing this trying epoch, lie was now and then able to 
gather and arrange some of his material; and he 
produced several works of minor importance — a few 
book reviews, the novel " Vassall Morton " in 1856, 
and " The Book of Roses " in 1866. At the close of 
the war he visited Washington and Richmond, that 
he might at least see the battlefields where he would 
have fought with so much zeal. The Boston Athe- 
naeum voted him $500 to buy rebel documents and 
publications ; and he brought back some valuable 
papers to that institution. In 1866 he made a journey 
to Montreal, Two Mountains, the Long Sault, the 



CHRONOLOGICAL 35 

Chaudiere ; and then to Quebec to study in detail 
the scenes connected with Wolfe's attack. Feeling 
the need of once more seeing the Indians in their 
native state, he made a journey to Fort Snelling in 
1867, visiting on the way Keokuk, Peoria and the 
niinois River, Prairie du Chien, and St. Louis, and at 
the latter place hunting up his old guide and friend, 
Heniy Chatillon, with whom he had continued to cor- 
respond since the Oregon Trail trip. The Ottawa 
and Lake Nipissing were the only important historical 
locality that he did not see. 1868 was a year of 
exceptional suffering, rendering all work impossible, 
although he accepted election as Overseer of Harvard 
College. Finding that complete idleness now seemed 
necessary, and preferring Paris to any other place for 
such a life, he went abroad for the winter, establishing 
himself in lodgings at No. 21 Boulevard Saint Michel. 
Here he was vainly sought after by some of the 
writers of Paris and the ^lite of the Faubourer St. 
Germain. In the course of the winter his health im- 
proved sufficiently to enable him to enjoy sight-seeing 
and even make some researches, so that at his return 
in the spring of 1869 he resumed his labors and saw 
" La Salle " through the press. 

This year Parkman resigned his position as Over- 
seer of Harvard, and accepted an appointment as 
Professor of Horticulture. In 1872 he went again 
to Eui'ope for historical materials. Desiring some 
personal knowledge of the French Canadian people, 
he spent some weeks of 1873 in visiting several 



86 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

families living on tlieir seigniories along the shores 
of the St. Lawrence below Quebec. It is unfortu- 
nate that we have notliing characteristic to tell of 
his frequent visits to Canada. He made many- 
pleasant acquaintances at Montreal and Quebec, 
among both the English and the French writers, 
lay and clerical. 1874 is marked by the appefir- 
ance of the " Old Regime." In 1875 he was c\osen 
one of the Fellows of the Corporation of Harvard. 
" Frontenac " was published in 1877. Again he ex- 
plored the region between Lake George and Quebec, 
studying minutely the battlefields along the route. 
The state of his health prevented him from accepting 
the Presidency of the Archaeological Institute in 
1878, but the following year finds him once more in 
Quebec and Louisburg. I& 1880 he helped to or- 
ganize the St. Botolph Club — an association of the 
literary men and artists of Boston. The club chose 
him for the first President, and re-elected him for 
six successive years, as long as his strength allowed 
him to serve. His occasional utterances on public 
questions, showing how deep an interest he took 
in our national growth, led a Civil Service Reform 
Association to invite him in 1881 to be one of its 
Vice-Presidents. " Montcalm and Wolfe " appeared 
in 1884. In 1885 he made a journey to Florida to 
examine the places of historical interest in that 
region; stopping on the way at Beaufort, South 
Carolina; then going on to Fernandina, Jackson- 
ville, Fort George, Palatka, Ocklawaha river, Ocala 



CHRONOLOGICAL 37 

and St. Augustine. In 1886 he camped with me a 
month on the Batiscan River — the first time this 
lover of wild life had been to the woods in forty 
years. A delightful companion he was, interested 
in all the labors and pleasures of camp life, cheer- 
ful and patient under all circumstances. Despite 
his lame knee, he insisted on helping me complete 
the roof, the fireplace, and the tables we needed, 
and in doing what he could of camp work. In 
washing the dishes he alwaj's used water far too 
hot for his hands, saying " It 's so much more effec- 
tive" — a characteristic word of his. When I had 
chopped down some trees and cleared a little piece 
of land for a garden on the river bank, he gave the 
finishing touches to the soil and sowed the seeds. 
He had bought for the trip a Winchester rifle and 
a bamboo fly-rod. The mere possession of the rifle 
was the chief pleasure he anticipated from it, since 
he could not walk enough to do more than fire a 
few rounds in a camp at a target. He was a fair 
shot, even at that age and after so long disuse of 
firearms. Although a good bait fisherman, he now 
took his first lessons in casting the fly, and always 
thereafter showed much appreciation and respect for 
the fine art of angling. One day we went up the 
river in canoes to a large pool at the foot of a rapid 
where the currents were strong and the waters rather 
tumultuous. When I had worked up the pool and 
dropped anchor close to the cascade I beckoned him 
to follow. Being unused to canoeing and to rough 



38 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

waters, he evidently thought the attempt somewhat 
dangerous; but after casting a penetrating glance 
at my face, he came up into line with a certain 
martial obedience. He often talked of the French- 
Canadians, viewing them as the result of forces 
manifest in their history and their religion. He 
now and then spoke of the noted literary people of 
Boston, setting forth with great certainty of touch 
and sharpness of outline their salient traits; his 
criticism, while kindly and impartial, was always 
keen and firm. The most interesting manifestation 
of his personality was his mute approaches to nature 
after so many years of separation. He would look 
up at a bold bluff that arose several hundred feet 
above the river, as if fain to scale once more such 
lofty cliffs. Often he would get into the canoe and 
float down the river for a glimpse of our neighbors, 
a family of beaver. I recall most vividly his expect- 
ant look off into the depths of the forest as I once 
took my rod and paddled away to give him a day 
of solitude. His -sojourn at camp was so agreeable 
and beneficial that he wished to remain longer, but 
his fidelity to Harvard did not allow him to be absent 
from Commencement. On leaving for Boston he 
took with him a box full of ferns for his garden. 
As circumstances prevented him from carrying out 
his intention of returning to camp, he went in July 
to the Rangeley Lakes, and built a log cabin at the 
Bemis Camp, hoping that he and his sister might 
sometimes go tliither ; but his infirmities never al- 



CHRONOLOGICAL 89 

lowed him to make the journey a second time. He 
went with his sister to Europe in tlie summer of 
1880 and again in 1881 — his purpose being both 
to see his daughter who was then living in Paris 
and to get historical material. His last journey to 
Europe was made in 1887, in the hope of getting 
benefit from some of the German spas. He went 
with his friend, Dr. Algernon Coolidge, by steamer 
to Santander, and thence to Madrid. He had barely 
reached the latter place and attended a bull fight, 
when a fresh attack of insomnia and lameness in- 
duced him to return home by way of Paris, after an 
absence of only a few weeks. His maladies com- 
pelled him in 1888 to resign his office of Fellow of 
the Corporation of Harvard, after a service of thir- 
teen years. He was now spending a good part of 
every summer with his daughter and son-in-law, 
Mr. J. T. Coolidge, Jr., at their summer residence, 
the old Wentworth mansion at Little Harbor, Ports- 
mouth, N. H. It was there that he wrote a part of 
" Montcalm and Wolfe," and finished " A Half Cen- 
tury of Conflict," pubhshed in 1892. 

The close of Parkman's life was both happy and 
characteristic; — his work done, his reputation still in 
the ascendant, his friends increasing in number and 
appreciation. He had always hoped to die before 
reaching the lingering weakness and decrepitude of 
old age, for such a soul could not but dread any- 
thing that even pointed towards a diminution of 
power. When a friend once spoke with pride of 



40 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

the work he had done, his energy flamed out with 
the promise to do still more if he should live. His 
last summer was a very happy one ; comparative 
freedom from pain and the absence of anxiety as to 
the completion of his work brought both comfort 
and peace. He spent the season where he most 
enjoyed it, at the "Wentworth mansion and in the 
midst of his cliildren and grandchildren. In the 
autumn he returned to his home at the Pond, to 
amuse himself with the late flowers or with his 
boat on the lake. On coming in from his last row, 
on a Sunday, he felt ill and took to his bed. Peri- 
tonitis set in, but he rallied so much by Tuesday 
evening that a successful surgical operation was 
thought possible. Tliis hope had to be dismissed 
when he began to sink on Wednesday morning. 
He died peacefully about noon of that day, on the 
8th of November, 1893, and was buried in the Mount 
Auburn Cemetery. The last book he read was 
" Childe Harold," and his last words were to tell 
that he had just dreamed of killing a bear. Though 
suffering extremely, he yet maintained to his last 
hour an impressive degree of dignity, firmness, gen- 
tleness, and serenity. 

The honors that Parkman reaped were numerous. 
Laval University discussed conferring on him the 
degree of Doctor of Letters in 1878, though sec- 
tarian opposition defeated the project. McGill 
made him an LL.D. the following year, Williams 
in 1885, and Harvard in 1889. His official con- 



CHRONOLOGICAL 41 

nections with Harvard will be explained later. 
He was a member of the following societies : Cor- 
responding Member of the Royal Society of Canada, 
1884; Honorary Member of the London Society of 
Antiquarians, 1878 ; Member of the Royal Histori- 
cal Society of London, 1876^ — resigned; Member 
of a score or more of American and provincial his- 
torical societies; Member of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society; Fellow of the American Academy 
of Arts and Sciences ; Honorary Member of the 
Literary and Historical Society of Quebec ; Member 
of the American Antiquarian Society, of the Archae- 
ological Institute of America, of the New England 
Historic Genealogical Society, of the Bostonian So- 
ciety, of the American Folk-Lore Society, of the 
Massachusetts Horticultural Society, of the St. 
Botolph Club, and of the Colonial Society of 
Massachusetts. 

The more intimate honor of personal esteem was 
abundantly shown him on the occasion of his seven- 
tieth birthday; and still more widely and publicly 
at the time of his death. By the initiative of his 
friend, Professor Sargent, a generous fund was sub- 
scribed at once for erecting a memorial that is to mark 
the site of his house and garden at Jamaica Pond. 



/ 



3^art I 

PREPARATION 



CHAPTER III 

Paekivian unconsciously began his preparation for 
historical writing in boyhood. From an early day 
he so directed his efforts as to secure in the happiest 
proportions the study of nature, books, man, life, 
and history; and we shall see that he also met with 
a very exceptional spiritual discipline, the result of 
an iron will and immense energy encountering great 
difficulties and sufferings. 

He commenced his study of nature on Boston 
Common, by sounding the mysteries of Frog Pond 
with a pin hook, where he and his cousin caught 
horned pouts which they seasoned with ground cinna- 
mon and broiled over a fire in his father's garden. 
But soon he passed on to larger fields. When eight 
years of age, having a delicate and sensitive physique, 
he was turned loose on the farm of his maternal 
grandfather, Nathaniel Hall, at Medford, Mass. 
There the boy enjoyed four years of wholesome free- 
dom in fields and woods. He says of this time : " I 
walked twice a day to a school of high but undeserved 



PREPARATION 43 

reputation, about a mile distant in the town of Med- 
ford. Here I learned very little, and spent the inter- 
vals of schooling more profitably in collecting eggs, 
insects, and reptiles, trapping squirrels and wood- 
chucks, and making persistent though rarely fortu- 
nate attempts to kill birds with arrows." ^ The 
woods, indeed, were so seductive as to be responsible 
for considerable truancy on his part, and some conse- 
quent fibbing. Those years at Medford were counted 
among his happiest, for the manifold interests and 
activities of country life were very congenial to his 
tastes ; but the woods of the Middlesex Fells, at that 
time quite wild, were especially fitted to develop one 
of the boy's strongest passions, — the love of nature. 
There were hills that seemed mountains to his youth- 
ful mind and legs; cliffs of rock and uncertain 
marshes to arouse his spirit of adventure; wild 
animals to trail, shoot, or trap; ravines where the: 
Indian warrior may have lain in wait for his victims , 
streams that caught up the fancy and whirled it 
along on bubbles to the rapids ; ponds where the birch 
canoe could glide away through sunset clouds; Rud 
above all a forest having something of the silence, 
solitude, and mystery of primeval nature. The 
region thus reduced to a boy's grasp the boundless 
American wilderness and made him familiar with 
many elements of his future histories. 

1 He refers to the boarding-school for boys and girls, kept by- 
Mr, John Angier; the Rev. 0. B. Frothingham, a fellow student, 
speaks well of it, and Mr. "Wheelwright says that many people of 
note received their early training in it. 



44 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

But Parkman's mental energy led him, even at this 
early age, to probe still deeper into the natural sci- 
ences. He began, at Medford, a collection of minerals 
for which his father gave him a cabinet that he kept 
all his life, and in which he placed the rarer specimens 
met with in subsequent journeys. This study re- 
mained an active pursuit with him through his college 
days, resulting in a collection sufficiently important 
to be presented in 1847 to the Harvard Natural 
History Society. In fact, he seems never to have 
lost this interest, for a young friend who in his later 
days frequently rowed with him about Portsmouth 
says that his talk of the rocks there was entertaining 
even to a yo^xxg man fresh from the geological course 
of Har^'ard. 

'Zoology was naturally attractive to the young 
S3ortsman; and, though in after years his observa- 
tions were limited to civilized regions and domestic 
animals, it always remained a pleasant pastime. The 
OLly anecdotes remembered of his early youth relate 
to this subject. His omnivorous pockets scorned 
notaing they could hold, dead or alive. Once a 
snake that had revived in the warmth of the school- 
room stuck his head out of Frank's coat pocket, to 
the consternation of a little girl sitting near. Before 
throwing it out of the door, as commanded by the 
master, he made sure of the specimen by giving its 
neck a fatal wring. On another occasion his love of 
natural history seems to have been mingled with a 
good degree of humor. His father used to drive out 



PREPARATION 45 

to Medford and bring him home every Saturday to 
spend Sunday. These weekly returns to town were 
not at all to the boy's taste, and were said to be the 
only occasions on which he ever descended to any 
pretence ; he used to stare blankly at familiar town 
sights, wishing to pass for a green country lad. It 
is easy to believe that he preferred roaming the woods 
rather than going to church. One Sabbath morning 
he chanced on a compensation. While the Rev. Dr. 
Parkman in his black silk gown with his wife on his 
arm was walking down Hanover street in all the 
dignity that became his cloth, the boy following 
behind them, Mrs. Parkman observed a queer smile 
on the faces of those they passed. Ti^ming to find 
the cause, she beheld Frank carrying by tin: tail, at 
arm's length, a dead rat. His explanation thti.^ he 
wished to take it home to stuff did not avail ; he "\,v is 
obliged to relinquish the rat and resume his walk 
with more decorum. 

Parkman's fondness for animals by no means ceased 
when the graver duties of life replaced the plays of 
boyhood. In later years, "when visiting a fri(3nd 
residing in the country, the thing he found mo? t to 
admire in the house, that which interested him n ost. 
was a rug made of the skins of three raccoons that 
had been trapped on the premises. He seemed 
never to tire of contemplating the tails of the wild 
creatures as they lay side by side on the floor, recon- 
structing in his mind, no doubt, their agile former 
owners, and following them in imagination to their 



46 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

secret haunts among the rocks and trees, or accom- 
panying them on predatory excursions to neighboring 
hen-yards."^ Cats in particular were a favorite 
source of amusement. His friends so often sent him 
Christmas cards representing feline subjects, that 
he once counted in his study forty-two pictures of 
pussy. He particularly delighted in a life-sized cloth 
cat which he used to place by the side of the fire- 
place ; and on returning from the Rocky Mountains 
in 1846 he brought in a box made of buffalo hide a 
horned frog, wliich after its death he gave to the 
Agassiz Museum. Still, oddly enough, Parkman's 
relations to animals were not exactly affectionate. 
Though he liked to have them about him, and found 
endless entertainment in watching them, he did not 
wish to be bothered with the care of them, and never 
had any real pets. Rifle shooting was one of the 
|)assions of his youth, as is seen by his eager and 
i^eckless buffalo hunting on the Oregon Trail. In 
sp'ite of a rule of the college forbidding students 
to Aave firearms in their rooms, Parkman's quar- 
ter^ were those of a sportsman rather than a student. 
Bu^ he was not sportsman enough in his maturity to 
mal^ journeys for the mere purpose of shooting; or, 
perhaps, the infirmities that often made such an 
undertaking impossible, finally obliterated this taste. 
On the other hand, fishing remained, to the last, one 
of his favorite recreations. Circumstances favored 
this quieter kind of sport; and it gave him great 
1 Wheelwright, p. 11. 



PREPARATION 47 

satisfaction to catcli a good string of fish for ttie 
table — as though his sympathy with savage life 
were gratified by winning his food directly from the 
surrounding waters. He also brought himself early 
into close contact with nature through the study of 
botany, and while yet a boy found one more outlet 
for his energy in the growth of silkworms. 

Parkman's study of science separated him for a time 
from his natural haunts of fields and woods. In his 
autobiographic paper, in which he speaks of himself 
always in the third person, he says that " at the age 
of eleven or twelve he conceived a vehement liking 
for pursuits, a devotion to which at that time of life 
far oftener indicates a bodily defect than a mental 
superiority. Chemical experiment was his favorite 
hobby, and he pursued it with a tenacious eagerness 
which, well directed, would have led to some ac- 
quaintance with the rudiments of the science, but 
which, in fact, served little other purpose than injur- 
ing him by confinement, poisoning him with noxious 
gases, and occasionally scorching him with some ill- 
starred explosion." This turning from the outdoor 
world to the mystery of science took place when he 
left Medford and came to live again in Boston under 
the paternal roof. His father had a laboratory fitted 
up for him in a shed at the rear of the house. His 
comrades say that he became a fair manipulator, and 
showed considerable mechanical skill in constructing 
his apparatus. Among other things he made a well- 
finished electrical machine of wood, brass, and glass. 



48 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

with wliicli he liked to administer shocks to rows of 
girls holding each other by the hand. He even gave 
lectures on chemistry and electricity. The following 
announcement may furnish a taste of his quality at 
this epoch: 

" Grand Exhibition ! Mr. P. Parkman, grateful for 
receiving, and always desirous of returning the favors of 
his friends and of the public in general, begs leave to 
announce, most respectfully, that at the request of a large 
proportion of the citizens of this ' great metropolis ' he 
has consented (at a great expense and labor) to exhibit his 
truly astonishing, not to say wonderful and amazing ex- 
hibition of Phlsyoramic Pyrotecnicon ! or Pyrric Fires I 
Mr. Parkman having studied many years under Maelzel, 
the original inventor, can assure the public that they are 
fully equal to his. The performances will comjjrise, The 
pyramids and globes, the full sun (this piece cost $200), 
magic wheel, Transparency of Lord Nelson, etc. The whole 
to conclude with his powerful magic lantern, containing 
eighteen glasses comprising elegant and beautiful forms." 

Naturally the youthful instructor drew an audience 
composed chiefly of his youthful friends and rela- 
tions, but he attracted also some who were no longer 
young, and people of good memory testify to the 
entertaining quality of the boy's demonstrations. 

The strength of Parkman's early interest in science 
is shown by his own words in the following school 
composition, written in August, 1839. The paper, 
moreover, has an interest as evidence that the boy 
was studying the English language to good purpose; 



PREPARATION 49 

and it is the earliest bit of his composition that has 
been preserved : 

" Studies of Nature. Of all pursuits the cultivation of 
natural science tends most to enlarge the mind and im- 
prove the understanding. Nature affords for our con- 
templation subjects from the minutest to the most grand. 
We may study the animalcule contained in a drop of 
water, or observe the motions of the planetary bodies as 
they revolve in their unchanged orbits. No class of pur- 
suits affords so vast a variety of subjects and none is 
capable of awakening a deeper interest. Nature cannot 
be exhausted. The farther we investigate her secrets the 
wider appears the range she opens to us. The nearer the 
view we take of her, the more captivating does sbe appear. 

''"We all are born with an instinctive fondness for the 
beauties of nature. "We all take pleasure in viewing a 
lofty mountain, a fertile valley, or a clear stream. But 
most of us look upon such objects as we would upon a 
beautiful picture, we imagine no pleasure to be derived 
from them farther than that which arises from the clear- 
ness of the stream or the picturesque contrast of mountain 
and valley. 

''But suppose a man who has made nature his study, 
who, while searching into the great laws that govern her, 
has not neglected the tribes of living and inanimate be- 
ings to which she is indebted for life and beauty, — sup- 
pose him to be placed where we were, and to be looking 
upon the same objects. The black and precipitous rocks 
which lie piled in confusion above him, remind him of 
the period when that mountain emerged from the plain 
impelled by some irresistible subterranean power. He 

4 



60 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

notices the deposits which through successive ages have 
accumulated about its base, and compares the present 
appearance of that valley, enlivened by grazing herds and 
sparkling rivulets, with its aspect in former ages, when 
it perhaps formed the bed of a stagnant lake, the abode 
of monsters, now happily extinct. The plants and ani- 
mals about him next engage his attention, and in observ- 
ing their appearances and watching their motions, he 
finds an inexhaustible source of innocent gratification. 

"'But,' say some, 'of what use are such pursuits, or 
what man of sense can take pleasure in studying the 
habits of a paltry insect, or in classing and arranging an 
insignificant shell?' I answer that whatever tends to 
increase our knowledge of the globe we inhabit is of use, 
and that objects which appear too trifling to be noticed 
may, at some future day, be found of great benefit to 
mankind. 

"When the great chemical discoveries of Davy were 
published, it was said by some, 'Such discoveries are 
curious and wonderful, but to what possible use can they 
be applied ?' Of what use is the spring of a watch ? It 
is the agent by which the motion of the other parts is 
produced, and unless it had first been invented, a watch 
could never have been made. The principle of the spring 
was known long before any one thought of applying it to 
the construction of time-pieces. It is the same with such 
discoveries. They point out the principles which sooner 
or later will be made the agent in some great improve- 
ment in art. The application of the principle may not 
immediately be discovered, but we should not on this 
account condemn it as useless. 

"Why then should the naturalist be accused of spend- 



PKEPARATION 51 

ing his time iu useless pursuits? Use, of which we have 
no idea may yet be made of his researches, and in the 
meantime there is no pursuit more innocent, more inter- 
esting, or more agreeable than the study of Natural 
History." 

But Parkman needed a broader knowledge of 
nature than was to be had in the details of natural 
science, and before long he directed his steps to 
wider and more genial fields. He said in his auto- 
biographical letter: 

''The age of fifteen or sixteen produced a revolution. 
At that momentous period of life retorts and crucibles 
were forever discarded, and an activity somewhat exces- 
sive took the place of voluntary confinement. A new 
passion seized him, which, but half gratified, still holds 
its force. He became enamoured of the woods, a fancy 
which soon gained full control over the course of the 
literary pursuits to which he was also addicted." 

His return to nature was at first directed chiefly 
by a boy's love of activity in the open air. He en- 
joyed long walks with a companion about the suburbs 
of Boston. But soon, at the age of seventeen or 
eighteen, the purpose of writing the history of the 
French and Indian War became the controlling power 
of his life, and he at once began a remarkable con- 
centration of all his powers and activities on this one 
aim. With a breadth of view unusual in so young 
a mind, he saw that for this theme would be needed 
a much wider range of experience and knowledge 



52 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

than the study could give ; and he wisely estimated 
a knowledge of the wilderness and its life as among 
the most important elements of his preparation. His 
chivalric nature, too, was easily fired with an ambi- 
tion to emulate Cooper's dusky heroes, who were 
then popular personages with many other readers 
besides himself; and on his tramps in the woods, he 
was continually living and acting their characters. 
Finally, one of his strongest characteristics, a love of 
stir and movement, also pushed him to the excessive 
activity of which he speaks in the above -quoted pas- 
sage from his autobiography. 

He now began, on entering Harvard, a course of 
physical training by which he hoped to acquire the 
utmost strength, agility, and endurance; further- 
more, he made his contact with nature serve his 
literary projects. He took long walks at a pace his 
companions found it hard to keep up; he practised 
rifle shooting at birds, chipmunks, and other animals ; 
he also worked in the gymnasium and riding school 
with great energy and success. Thus he systematic- 
ally prepared himself for trips in the wilderness. 
From his freshman year onward he devoted every 
summer vacation to journeys about the United States 
and Canada, partly in inhabited regions to collect 
historic material, and partly in the wilderness to 
study its features and the experiences of life on the 
border and in the woods, recording his observations 
in a few small diaries kept from 1841 to 1846. 

Parkman's journals, significant though they are 



PREPARATION 53 

of his mind and character, make their revelations 
quite as much by their omissions as by their notes; 
and if we would see their whole significance and 
bearing we must keep in mind the writer's peculiar 
nature. 

They sprang from no impulse to record the move- 
ments of his inner life ; they are only the exercises of 
a young man bent on cultivating his powers of obser- 
vation and description. Singularly reticent in regard 
to feelings and intentions, these notes are almost 
exclusively a record of external phenomena. Yet, 
while as autobiographic material they are disappoint- 
ing, they do now and then cast light on Parkman's 
individuality. Their force comes from his sticking 
simply to facts, and from his good judgment in 
selecting the effective and characteristic in whatever 
he sketches ; having been written, moreover, without 
any thought of publication, their style has the charm 
of simplicity and naturalness sometimes absent from 
his first books. They are everywhere entirely free 
from the grandiloquence so frequent in the collegi- 
ate's pages. In offering some extracts it is, of 
course, impracticable to maintain a rigid division 
of subjects; we shall have to keep as a clue our 
chief aim of revealing Parkman's personality and 
growth, and let the headings blend more or less 
under this general purpose. 

The following entry in his diary at the White 
Mountain Notch shows with what nerve and ambition 
the youth was setting out in life : 



54 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

''This afternoon I achieved the most serious adventure 
it was ever my lot to encounter. I walked down the 
Notch to the Willej^ House, and out of curiosity began to 
ascend the pathway of the avalanche on the mountain 
directly behind. This j^athway is a deep ravine chan- 
nelled in the side of the mountain, which in this place is 
extremely steep. In the bottom of this gulf a little 
stream comes down from a spring above, and renders the 
precipitous rocks as slippery as clay. The sides of the 
ravine, which runs directly up and down the mountain, 
are a decaying granite, while the bottom is formed by a 
trap-dike. I ascended at first easily, but the way began 
to be steeper and the walls on each side more precipitous. 
Still I kept on until I came to a precipice about forty feet 
high and not far from perpendicular. I could see that 
this was followed by a similar one above. Professor 
Silliman, a year or two ago, ascended in this place until, 
as he says, 'further progress was prevented by inacces- 
sible precipices of the trap-rock.' The exploit of the 
Professor occurred to me as I stood below, and I deter- 
mined that the ' inaccessible precipices ' which had cooled 
his scientific ardor should prove no barriers to me. I began 
to climb, and with considerable difficulty and danger, and 
with the loss of my stick, which went rattling and bound- 
ing down the ravine many rods before it found a resting- 
place, I surmounted both precipices. I climbed on, but 
finding that I was becoming drenched by the scanty 
stream, and seeing, moreover, a huge cloud not far up, 
settling slowly towards me, I bethought me of retracing 
my steps. I knew that it would be impossible to descend 
by the way I had come, and accordinglj^, I tried to get 
out of the ravine to the side of the mountain which was 



PREPARATION 55 

covered with wood which I could grasp hold of to assist 
me. But I was inclosed between two walls of fifty feet 
high and so steep, and composed of such materials that 
an attempt to climb would only bring down the rotting 
granite upon my head. So I began to descend the ravine, 
nothing doubting that I could find some means of getting 
out before reaching the critical point. But it was impos- 
sible, and I found myself at the top of the precipice with 
no alternative but to slide down, or clamber the perpendi- 
cular and decaying walls to the surface of the mountain. 
The former was certain destruction, as I proved by suffer- 
ing a rotten log to slide down. It glanced by the first 
descent like an arrow, struck at the bottom, bounded six 
feet into the air, and leaped down the mountain, splinter- 
ing into twenty pieces as it went. The other method was 
scarcely less dangerous, but it was my only chance, and 
I braced my nerves and began to climb. Down went 
stones and pebbles, clattering hundreds of feet below and 
giving me a grateful indication of my inevitable fate in 
case my head should swim or my courage fail. I had got 
half way up and was climbing to the face of the precipice, 
when the two stones which supported my feet loosened 
and leaped down the ravine. My finger ends, among the 
rotten gravel were all which sustained me, and they, of 
course, would have failed had I not thought on the in- 
stant of lowering my body gradually, and so diminishing 
its weight, until my feet found new supporters. I sunk 
the length of my arms and then hung for the time, in 
tolerable safety, with one foot resting on a projecting 
stone. Loosening the hold of one hand, T took my large 
jack-knife from my pocket, opened it, with the assistance 
of my teeth, and dug with it a hollow among the decayed 



56 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

stones, large enough to receive and support one foot. 
Then thrusting the knife as far as possible into the wall 
to assist my hold, I grasped it, and the stones with the 
unoccupied hand, and raised my foot to the hollow pre- 
pared for it; thus, foot by foot, I made my way, and in 
ten minutes, as time seemed to me, I seized a projecting 
root at the top and drew myself up. During the whole 
time of climbing I felt perfectly cool, but when fairly up 
I confess I shuddered as I looked down at the gulf I had 
escaped. A large stone, weighing, perhaps, a hundred 
pounds, lay on the edge. I thrust it off with my foot, 
and down it went, struck the bottom of the ravine with 
a tremendous crash, and thundered down, leaping from 
side to side, until it lodged at last, far below against a 
projecting rock. I descended the mountain by means of 
the trees and bushes, cut a fishing-pole at the bottom, 
and having amused myself with an hour's fishing, went 
to the tavern and astonished the company with a recital 
of my adventure. Crawford expressed considerable aston- 
ishment at my escape, and the young lady iu whose com- 
pany I got my ducking on the stage transferred an 
account to her journal, but refused to let me see it, 
promising to send me a copy the moment her book was 
out of press." 

A letter to his father, written July 22, two days 
before this event, shows that his adventurous spirit 
caused some anxiety at home. The haj^py traveller 
said : 

''I write, as in duty bound, to relieve your spirit of 
the overwhelming load of anxiety which doubtless op- 
presses you, seeing that your son is a wanderer in a 



PREPARATION 57 

strange land, — a land of precipices and lakes, bears, 
wolves, and wildcats. Not only has my good genius 
borne me in safety tbrougb such manifold perils, but he 
has also infused into my heart such a spirit of content- 
ment with my lot that I should be in no wise reconciled 
to any manner of change." 

It was his way to make light of hardship, fatigue, 
peril, and suffering; he rarely mentioned them in 
either his diaries, conversations, or the few letters he 
wrote. 

He wrote again later: 

"The worst thing I have yet encountered in the way 
of danger was an attack from an old he-goose backed by 
a little bitch puppy, who assaulted us on the highway, 
but was soon put to flight without loss of life on either 
side." 

Here is one of his earliest pictures of the wilder- 
ness he was later to portray so vividly: 

"We passed the meadows at length, and again our way 
was through the forest, and a most wild and beautiful ap- 
pearance did the river shores present (the Magalloway). 
From the high banks huge old pines stooped forward over 
the water, the moss hanging from their aged branches, 
and behind rose a wall of foliage, green and thick, with 
no space or opening which the eye could penetrate. . . . 
Soon the moon came up and glistened on the still river 
and half lighted the black forest. An owl, disturbed by 
the glare of our fire, sent forth a long, wild cry from the 
depths of the woods, and was answered by the shrill bark 
of some other habitant of the forest." 



58 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PAROIAN 

This practical study of the wilderness and the life 
men led in it was the most congenial of all his labors 
of preparation; but it was cut short when he had 
finished his journey on the Oregon Trail. 

Such trips furnished amusing incidents as well as 
trying ones, and the youth showed his patience and 
good humor by making equally light of both kinds 
of experiences. This diary of 1841 tells of his 
friend Slade and himself crossing a "guzzle " on their 
tramp up the Magalloway: 

''I said before that our road was of a structure some- 
what unelaborate, but as yet we had encountered no dif- 
ficulties like that which now presented itself. A muddy 
creek two rods wide and of uncertain depth extended back 
from the river directly across our path. There had once 
been, as we were assured, a trunk felled so as to form a 
sort of bridge across this slough of despond, but now the 
only means of passing were three or four slender poles 
projecting from each side and meeting in the middle 
where a floating log contributed to their supj^ort. We 
stood in horror and amazement, in vain endeavoring to 
solve the problem how a man of ordinary weight could 
place his foot on such a structure without ' slumping in ' 
at once. We determined to put the matter to the test of 
experiment. I excused myself from making the first essay 
on the plea that I carried a heavier weight than my 
friend, upon whom, then, the first responsibility de- 
volved. Seated on the bank I watched his operations. 
With a countenance of direful import, he strapped his 
knapsack firmly on his back, grasped a long pole, one end 
of which he planted firmly in the mud at the bottom to 



PREPARATION 59 

support his tottering footsteps, and cautiously advanced 
his foot upon the frail bridge. He had gotten about two 
yards from the bank, when the poles began gradually to 
sink beneath his weight, yet by a certain fatality he con- 
tinued to advance until he gained the log in the middle. 
The water was above his knees, and fast rising to his 
waist. The poles began to glide like eels from beneath 
him ; if he stood still the bridge was too weak to sustain 
him, if he moved he lost his foothold. He felt his fate 
inevitable, and with a dismal imprecation sprang desper- 
ately toward some loose logs and brush-wood that floated 
near the opposite bank. The logs tilted up, there was a 
heavy splash, and my friend appeared struggling and 
floundering amid the ruins of the demolished bridge. He 
grasped a root that projected from the bank, and drew 
himself up wet and beslimed from head to foot, but with 
a temper in no wise affected by his misfortune, for he 
responded most heartily to the laughter with which I 
saluted him. My companion being over six feet high, 
and yet feeling as he declared, no bottom to the gulf, I 
felt my own situation rather awkward. I set about mak- 
ing a new bridge while he arranged his toilet as best he 
might on the other side. Strapping my gun and other 
equipments to my back I managed to get over, though 
wet to the knees." 

In all his wanderings Parkman never made an 
aimless journey ; even now, when a freshman out on 
his summer vacation, lie had a very practical pur- 
pose in view: 

"My chief object in coming so far was merely to have 
a taste of the half savage kind of life necessary to be led, 



60 A LIFE OF FEANCIS PARKMAN 

and to see the wilderness where it was as yet uninvaded 
by the hand of man." 

And at the close of the trip : 

''I regard this journey hut ^as the beginning of 
greater things,' and as merely prefatory to longer 
wanderings." 

In 1842 he went again to the Magalloway. Nat- 
urally such an ardent lover of forest life was pained 
by all elements of civilization that destroyed the wil- 
derness and altered primitive, or at least simple, 
methods of living. Thus he said at the beginning 
of this trip of 1842, while in the train en route for 
Albany: "Of all methods of progressing, that by 
steam is inco.nparably the most disgusting." The 
sights of Saratoga put him into an " unmitigated tem- 
per," while at Glens Falls, so degraded from their 
natural beauty, his "wrath mounted higher yet." 
He was equipped this year for the wilderness better 
than before, having among other things, his much- 
loved rifle "Satan." There is little to quote con- 
cerning his study of nature on this trip; the best of 
his diary is to be seen in the article in Harper's, 
"Exploring the Magalloway." Here, however, is a 
good touch concerning Lake George: 

" We kept down the lake with a fierce wind sweeping 
down after us and driving the mists before it. The water 
was a dark, glistening blue, with lines of foam on the 
crests of the waves; huge shadows of clouds coursed along 



PREPARATION 61 

the mountains. The little islands would be lighted at 
one instant by a stream of sunshine falling on them, and 
almost making their black pines transparent, and the next 
moment they would be suddenly darkened, and all around 
be glittering with a sudden burst of light from the open- 
ing clouds." 

The following passage is exceptional for him, deal- 
ing, as it does, explicitly with sentiment, and read- 
ing into nature his own mood : 

''The air was full of mists, rolling along the hills, and 
entangled among the trees. Every mountain was hidden 
among clouds. We passed through tracts of half burned 
forests, steaming and smoking, some blasted trunks stand- 
ing upright, others prostrate among charred trunks and 
tangled underwood, all looking supernaturally dismal 
through mist and rain. ... At last we saw Lake Mem- 
phremagog, — a direful composition of great sheets of 
leaden water, scarce distinguishable from the fogs that 
enveloped it, and a border of melancholy trees which stood 
apparently lamenting, and pouring forth copious tears 
above it. All nature was in a fit of the blue-devils." 

Forest trees were evidently very dear to him ; they 
were the chief beings composing his favorite world of 
the wilderness, and they, more than any other single 
element of a landscape, seem to have kindled his 
imagination to the heat of poetic figures. He thus 
recorded his sympathy with these mute witnesses of 
his future dramas:^ 

1 Harper's Magazine, Nov. 1864, p. 736. 



62 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PAEKMAN 

" Around us was an innumerable host of trunks straight 
and crooked, smooth with youth, or bepatched with the 
mosses and lichens of rugged old age; erect in pristine 
vigor, or staggering for support against their neighbors; 
knotted and gnarled, infected with goitres and tumors, 
warts, and hideous fungi; or dribbling pitch or turpentine 
from frost-rent crevices and the stumps of wind-amputated 
limbs. Their dead comrades in every stage of dissolution 
and every variety of posture, cumbered the earth below, 
overgrown with a vile mesh-work of vines and creepers, 
scrub oaks, scrub savins, matted junipers and trailing 
wintergreen. Looking upward we could enjoy at intervals 
a hand's breadth of sky between the leaves, and the sur- 
rounding circle of vision varied from three yards to fifteen. 
Now and then there was a ' windfall ' — a disgusting feature 
of forest scenery, owing its origin to the passage of a 
whirlwind, sweeping down the trees and piling them in 
masses. One of them, in a hollow place, where a goi'ge 
opened from the mountain, presented an aspect singularly 
unpleasing. It was of old date, for the forest had grown 
up around and over it. Some of the trees had their heels 
in the air, some their heads, some were prostrate, and 
sprawling, and the rest pitched together at every angle 
which the tja-annical caprice of the tornado had ordained. 
All were more or less rotten, according to their nature and 
position. Some were a mass of pulp, delicately coated over 
with a sleek green moss, which, pressed with the finger, 
oozed like a sponge. Others not as perishable or lifted 
higher from the earth still showed fight against the 
elements, and scores of red cedars in particular bristled 
out of every part of the pile in an execrable chevaux-de- 
frise." 



PREPARATION 63 

In his diary of the summer of 1843 is this passage 
relating to scenery : 

" I write at the bottom of a den more savage than the 
last. Turn to the left as you approach Cra\Yford's, enter a 
gateway of rock, and you will reach two dens that look 
like the very bottom of hell. Nothing but great piles of 
damp mossy rocks, rotten timber, huge black cliffs, fenc- 
ing you in with trees stretching across from their edges. 
A stream is plunging somewhere underground and break- 
ing out into a black pool among the moss. Behind is a 
great heap of rocks where you descend. In front a steep 
descent, choked with fallen timber, and such a tangled 
mass of vegetation that a bear could scarce get through." 

Under a pressed flower, still preserved between the 
pages, he wrote: "This delicate little flower, what- 
ever it be, I place here in memory of the grimmest, 
dismallest den on earth, where it grew among moist 
precipices and rotting logs." 

In the autumn of 1843 Parkman sailed for Europe 
from motives connected with his health. This diary 
of 1843-44 is more interesting than the earlier ones, 
his mind now being more mature and the field of his 
observations more varied and extensive. Not even 
seasickness could repress his energy and interest in 
the phenomena about him. "A turtle," he wrote, 
"came up at the ship's side to sleep on the quiet 
surface, but prudently sunk back to the depths just 
as Mr. Hansen was lowering me by a rope to take 
him prisoner." But he was attracted chiefly by the 
grander aspect of the sea : 



64 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

'^As soon as it was daybreak I went on deck. Two or 
three sails were set — the vessel scouring along, leaning 
over so that her gunwale scooped up the water; the water 
in a foam, and clouds of spray flying over us, frequently 
as high as the mainyard. The spray was driven with such 
force that it pricked the cheek like needles. I stayed on 
deck two or three hours; when, being thoroughly salted, I 
went down, changed my clothes, and read 'Don Quixote,' 
till Mr. Snow appeared at the door with — ' You 're the 
man that wants to see a gale of wind, are ye ? Now 's 
your chance : only just come up on deck.' I went. The 
wind was yelling and howling in the rigging in a fashion 
that reminded me of a storm in a Canadian forest. ... I 
got hold of a rope by the mizzen mast, and looked about 
on a scene that it would be perfect folly to attempt to 
describe. . . . The sailors clung, half drowned, to what- 
ever they could lay hold of, for the vessel was, at times, 
half inverted, and tons of water washed from side to side 
of her deck. ... As for the usual horizon it had disap- 
peared — we seemed imbedded among moving mountains. 
... It was a noble sight when at intervals the sun broke 
out over the savage waste, changing its blackness to a 
rich blue, almost as dark; while the foam that flew over 
it seemed like whirling snow-wreaths on the mountains." 

The voyage was tedious with bad weather; from 
storms they passed to exasperating calms when al- 
most in sight of Gibraltar, and he reported in this 
way the captain's complaints: 

'''A head wind and none of it,' groans the Captain: 
*if ever I see the beat of this ! ' This is but the nucleus 
of his remarks, so to speak, which he surrounds and 



PREPARATION 65 

adorns with a host of forcible and ornamental forms of 
expression which I refrain from recording." 

But at last they lauded at Gibraltar, and Parkman 
rested his observaut eyes on European scenes. As 
he visited no places that are new to readers of to- 
day, we pass by most of his descriptive pages; but 
here and there a passage is noteworthy as a reflection 
of his tastes and characteristics. He gave in these 
few words an admirable picture of Palermo: 

"After taking a last look at the ancient and moss- 
grown church and the black cliffs around it, I left Monte 
Pellegrino. As we waded through the snow down the 
mountain the view of Palermo was noble. The valley 
was as smooth and level as the ocean, and set between 
the immense arch of snow-covered mountains, as green 
and bright as an emerald. The city was but a very 
small part — there were forests of olive trees, and im- 
measurable gardens, all dotted with white houses, and the 
palaces of the nobles. It was the King's birthday, and 
the city was half covered with the smoke of cannon." 

Seldom does a celebrated historian show Parkman's 
degree of indifference to archseology and his prefer- 
ence for nature over the works of man. At Naples 
he found that in the continual attacks of beggars and 
custodians "you have a sum of petty vexations 
enough to damp any man's zeal for exploring classi- 
cal localities. Fortunately I never had much to lose. 
I would go farther for one look into the crater of 
Vesuvius than to see all the ruined temples in Italy." 

5 



66 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

He was fortunate enougli to visit the volcano with 
Theodore Parker: 

" Our guides went quite near to the base of the cone, 
dodging the falling lava with great activity. Some of 
these melted masses must have weighed a ton. As they 
fell, they spread out over a large surface. The guide 
would make a sudden rush at them, detach a small por- 
tion with a pole, which he carried to a safe distance and 
then stamped by pressing a copper coin into it. After a 
while Mr. Parker and I took our part in the exercise, and 
secured several trophies. The floor of the great crater on 
which we stood had been a sea of melted lava only three 
days before." 

The memory of this scene possibly sprang up in 
his mind thirty years afterwards, when writing of 
the Missionaries, and suggested this telling com- 
parison : 

"Whether the foe was of earth or hell, the Jesuits 
were like those who tread the lava-crust that palpitates 
with the throes of the coming eruption, while the molten 
death beneath their feet glares white-hot through a 
thousand crevices." ^ 

Of Lake Como he said : 

''I have seen nothing at home or abroad more beautiful 
than this lake. It reminds me of Lake George — the 
same extent, the same figure, the same crystal purity of 
waters, the same wild and beautiful mountains on either 
side. But the comparison will not go farther. Here are 

1 The Old Regime, p. 81. 



PREPARATION 67 

a hundred palaces and villages scattered along the water's 
edge, and up the declivities. There is none of that 
shaggy untamed aspect in the mountains — no piles of 
rocks, grown over with stunted bushes; or half decayed 
logs fallen along the shore. There are none of those little 
islands, covered with rough and moss-grown pine trees, 
which give a certain savage character to the beauties of 
Lake George. All here is like a finished picture; even 
the wildest rocks seem softened in the air of Italy. Give 
me Lake George, and the smell of the pine and fir ! " 

Crossing the Alps by the Spliigen Pass, he found 
much that impressed him profoundly : 

''I spent the day yesterday in the valley of Ferrera, 
one of the wildest and loneliest in the Alps, and accessible 
only by a bad foot-path. The river comes down at the 
bottom, which the sun scarcely ever touches. The 
mountains rise on each side many thousand feet, broken 
into crags and precipices, with streams falling down them 
in all directions, scattering into white mists before they 
reach the bottom. The spruce trees are sprinkled all over 
the cliffs, wherever there is a crevice to cling in; some 
gigantic pines stoop across the river and fairly seem to 
quiver with the tremendous roar of the water. All is 
solitary and still as death, excepting the noise of the 
river; yet you cannot sit on one of these rocks, and 
watch the green and furious water, glancing between the 
trunks and branches below, without fancying that you hear 
sounds and voices about you. I never knew a place so 
haunted by Hhose airy tongues that syllable men's 
names.' " 



68 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

The Alps, especially those wilder regions about 
Ancleer, seem to have given him his deepest enjoy- 
ment of scenery on the continent. He wrote at this 
place : 

"Nothing could surpass the titter savageness of the 
scenery that you find by tracing up some of the little 
streams that pour down on all sides to join the Rhine ; not 
a trace of human hand — it is as wild as the hack forest 
at home. The mountains, too, wear the same aspect. 
There is one valley where a large stream comes down to 
join the main river, a mile from Andeer. Last night I 
followed it for a mile or two, back into the mountains. 
Not Cooper himself could do it justice. The river was a 
hundred feet below, in a ravine, where it lashed from side 
to side, and bounded sometimes in a fall of fifty or sixty 
feet — the green headlong water, the white foam, and the 
spray just visible through the boughs of the distorted 
pines that leaned over the abyss. There was in one place 
a peasant's hut of logs, but it seemed only to increase the 
sublime effect of the wilderness. I got down to the bed 
of the river, and leaped out to some rocks near the centre. 
It was nearly dark — long after sunset. What with the 
deafening thunder of the stream — the gloom that began 
to involve the shaggy branches of the yellow pines, that 
leaned nearly across the gulf, and the stiff and upright 
spruces that sprung from every crevice of the rock — 
what with this and the savage aspect of the rocks, which 
were black and dripping with spray — there was some- 
thing almost appalling in the place. Above the tops of 
the trees rose mountains like ours of New England, cov- 
ered with fir trees, wherever one could cling in the 



PREPARATION 69 

crevices of the steep cliffs. And in another direction the 
more distant peaks were white with snow which retained 
its glistening brightness long after the moon had begun 
to cast a shadow. Here was a change with a vengeance, 
from the Italian beauties of the Lake of Como. I sat on 
the rock, fancying myself again in the American woods 
with an Indian companion ; but as I rose to go away the 
hellish beating of my heart warned me that no more such 
expeditions were in store for me, for the present at least — 
but if I do not sleep by the camp fire again it shall be no 
fault of mine." 

He added : " I never left any place with more regret 
than these mountains." 

On reaching Scotland, he derived the keenest pleas- 
ure of his entire journey from the scenery connected 
with Scott and his works. He said: 

''I like the Scotch — I like the country and everything 
in it. The Liverpool packet will not wait, or I should 
stay long here and take a trout from every ' burnie ' in 
the Cheviot. The scenery has been grossly belied by 
Irving and others — it is wild and beautiful — I have seen 
none more so." 

He regretted that he had not time to visit the High- 
lands. Edinburgh is the city he liked best of all: 
" The view from Calton Hill is, to my thinking, the 
only city view I ever saw that deserved to be called 
sublime." 

His diaries of 1845 and of 1846, before he reached 
the prairies, contain very little relative to nature; 
but that little is not without interest, in showing a 



70 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

stronger tendency in his mind to study details. He 
wrote at Cahokia, near St. Louis, just before his 
departure on the Oregon Trail trip: 

" I walked up the banks of the creek into the woods — 
it was nothing like our swift and clear mountain waters 
— all was teeming with life, animal and vegetable, just 
awakening in the warm spring sunshine. The creek was 
slow and sluggish — a haunt, in the season, for fever and 
ague — the luxuriant woods overshadowed it, interlaced 
with vines like snakes, and all bursting into leaf and 
flower — full, too, of birds, who would come down to 
splash and wash themselves in the water — and fragrant 
with the fresh smell of young leaves and blossoms. The 
pool was full of frogs and great turtles, sitting on logs, 
and among slime — now and then a water snake, with his 
head lifted high, would writhe his way across — and as 
you pass by some sheltered cove the whole water would 
be alive with minute fishes, skipping out of it in their 
terror." 

As a final word on his love of nature may be given 
this passage from his diary in Sicily in 1843-44 : " I 
never imagined that so much pleasure could be con- 
veyed through the eye, a pleasure not inferior to and 
not unlike that of looking upon the face of a beauti- 
ful woman." 

Unhappily his diaries came to an end with that of 
1846, which was the basis of "The Oregon Trail." 
For this important and arduous journey he had pre- 
pared himself most thoroughly by the study of nature 



PREPARATION 71 

we have been following; by a systematic physical 
training in gymnastics, riding, and tramping; by the 
practice of shooting, trailing, camping, and wood- 
craft in general; by a long study of Indian character, 
life, history, and traditions. This book merits the 
reader's attention not only as a record of Indian life 
now no longer visible, but especially as a revelation 
of the writer's enthusiastic love of freedom, adven- 
ture, and activity; it shows with what absolute in- 
difference he faced danger, with what fortitude he 
endured hardship, fatigue, and suffering, with what 
energy and persistence he pursued a most hazardous 
undertaking to a successful close. This trip and its 
record, so characteristic of the man, were a striking 
culmination of his study of nature in her wildest and 
grandest solitudes of prairie, desert, forest, and 
mountain, and in the company of the wildest tribes of 
men. 



CHAPTER IV 

Pakkiman's education in books was from an early 
day governed by tlie same liappy combination of 
wisdom, instinct, and good fortune that directed his 
relations to nature. In fact, with the exception of 
the study of chemistry, everything he did as boy 
and young man, — whether play, study, or travel — 
helped directly to prepare him for his future career. 
He attended his first school at Medford. In 1836 
he entered the school of Mr. Gideon Thayer, in 
Chauncy Place, Boston. His teacher, the late Mr. 
Thomas Gushing, said of him : 

" He was a quiet, gentle, and docile boy, who seemed 
to appreciate the fact that school meant an opportunity 
for improvement, and always gave an open and willing 
mind to instruction. He became, according to the ideas 
of the day, a good Latin and Greek scholar, and excelled 
in the rhetorical department. I think he early set his 
face in the direction of a literary life of some sort, though 
the idea of historical work was probably developed some- 
what later. As a means to any sort of literary work, he 
no doubt saw the advantage and necessity of forming a 
good Euglisb style and acquiring correctness in the use 
of language, and took great pains with all exercises 
tending to bring about this result. His compositions 



PREPARATION 73 

were especially good, and he used sometimes as a volun- 
tary exercise to versify descriptious of heroic achieve- 
ments that occurred in his reading. I remember that 
he put into verse the whole description of the Tourna- 
ment in Scott's **Ivanhoe," and then used it afterwards 
in declamation, and it was so much liked that other boys 
used it for the same purpose. I think he might have 
excelled in narrative and descriptive poetry (the poetry 
of action) had he not early imbibed the historical idea. 
He often expressed to me in after life the great advantage 
that he received from the instruction of one of the teach- 
ers at that time connected with Chauncy Hall school, in 
everything pertaining to the use of English and the 
formation of style, which he followed up at Harvard 
by diligent use of his opportunities with an excellent 
instructor. Prof. Edward T. Channing."^ 

Parkman gave this account of his study of 
writing : 

"When fourteen or fifteen years old I had the good 
luck to be under the direction of Mr. William Russel, a 
teacher of excellent literary taste and acquirements. It 
was his constant care to teach the boys of his class to 
write good and easy English. One of his methods was 
to give us lists of words to which we were required to 
furnish as many sj^nonyms as possible, distinguishing 
their various shades of meaning. He also encouraged us 
to write translations, in prose and verse, from Virgil and 
Homer, insisting on idiomatic English, and criticising 
in his gentle way anything flowery and bombastic. At 
this time I read a good deal of poetry, and much of it 
1 Wheelwright. 



74 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN" 

remains verbatim in mj memory. As it included Milton 
and other classics, I am confident that it has been of 
service to me in the matter of style. Later on, when in 
college, and after leaving it, I read English prose classics 
for the express purpose of improving myself in the lan- 
guage.^ These I take to be the chief sources of such 
success as I have had in this particular." ^ 

He looked back with satisfaction upon his school 
days, and in after life it always gave him much 
pleasure to meet his old teachers and show them 
respect and kindness. 

His college course brings to light his independ- 
ence, strong practical turn of mind, and indifference 
to the spirit and theoretical aims of perfectionists. 
In opposition to the opinions and practice of his day, 
lie was probably the first man in American colleges 
to follow an elective course and become a specialist. 
He was not led by ideality to desire the greatest 
breadth of culture ; on the contrary, his instincts, 
tastes and judgment, all pointed to one field, and he 
confined himself to the straightest path thither. If 
we may judge by his reading, writing, and memoriz- 
ing much poetry at school, and by the records of his 
reading at Harvard, poetry was the first aim of 
liis literary ambition. He referred probably to this 
design in his autobiography : 

"After the usual boyish phases of ambitious self- 
ignorance, he resolved to confine his homage to the Muse 

1 Burke is said to have been his cliief model for style. 

2 The Art of Authorship, personalli/ contributed by leading authors 
of the day. Compiled and edited by George Bainton, London, 1890. 



PREPARATION 75 

of History, as being less apt than her wayward sisters to 
requite his devotion with a mortifying rebuff." 

Not only did he early abandon his poetic illusion, 
but he also chose with great promptness the division 
of history to which he would devote himself. " At 
the age of eighteen the plan which he is still at- 
tempting to execute was, in its most essential feat- 
ures, formed." 

Thus early in life did Parkman see his way and 
enter upon his course. He now changed his reading 
quite abruptly and completely from poetry to the 
accounts of border life, the Indians, the French and 
Indian War ; directing his college labors chiefly to 
the study of history and of English composition. 
It was remarked that he always did with the great- 
est energy and persistence what he liked to do, and 
neglected other things in the same masterful fashion. 
He therefore attained to good scholarship in his 
chosen branches of history and rhetoric. He mas- 
tered also French, and Latin as far as was necessary 
for his future investigations. He described his own 
standing, as well as some of his college experiences 
with his chum, in an after-dinner speech in 1885 : ^ 

''Something more than forty years ago Mr. Benjamin 
Apthorp Gould, Master of the Latin School, and Dr. 
Parkman, Minister of the New North Church, took coun- 
sel together and agreed that their sons, who were just 
passing the freshman examination at Harvard, should be 

1 Speech at a dinner given in honor of Dr. Gould, May 7, 1885. 
Boston Daily Advertiser, 



76 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

joined in bonds of chumsliip. This union, thus brought 
about by the parents between young persons who had 
never seen each other, was the foundation and beginning 
of a lifelong friendship. Its beginnings were a little 
breezy, I might say squally. On one occasion Mr. Gould 
came out to pour oil upon the troubled waters, and with 
a good humored seriousness he told us that chumship is 
like matrimony, — it requires a great deal of forbearance 
on both sides. Whether it was in consequence of this 
remark or not, I do not know, but certain it is that a 
most cordial harmony was soon restored between the 
parties, and has continued unbroken to this day. I 
remember an incident which took place on the evening of 
the day when we first occupied No. 9 Holworthy, Which 
after it was over, gave us both a good deal of pleasure. 
It was a very hot night. We had opened our windows 
in search of air, when there was a knock at the door, and 
ten or twelve seniors came in. It was an immensely im- 
pressive circumstance. We regarded the seniors with 
awe and reverence. Still it was not above their dignity 
to haze a couple of harmless and callow freshmen. They 
closed the windows and took out cigars and began to 
smoke their cigars to smoke us out. We bore it for a 
while; then the air became thick, and we began to think 
we had had enough of it. Suddenly one of the seniors 
sprang up and rushed to the door and asked for the key. 
The door was open, he went out, left his supper on the 
doorstep and went to his room, followed by all the rest. 

*'The average scholarship of Holworthy was exceed- 
ingly creditable. As regards mathematics, it was particu- 
larly so — in spite of fate, I might say, for I alwaj's and 
invariably failed, and my chum came off with flying 



PEEPARATION 77 

colors, making up all the difference. I remember the 
last examination when Professor Pierce in presence of 
a committee examined us, and I was required, according 
to the cruel custom of the times, to work out a problem 
on the blackboard. I had not opened my algebra for six 
months, having devoted to rifle-shooting the time which 
I was expected to devote to mathematics. A problem 
was proposed. I said ^ Don't know it, sir.' Professor 
Pierce with great kindness then proposed another, to 
which I replied ' I cannot do it, sir.' He then tried a 
third. ^ I don't know anything about it, sir.' ' Mr. 
Parkman, you may go.' " 

But Parkman's standing must not be judged en- 
tirely by his jocose frankness as to his failure in 
mathematics. In the first term of the sophomore 
year he received a detur, a testimonial to deserv- 
ing students ^^pro insigni in studiis diligentia.^^ In 
the second term of this year he was among the first 
eight; and at the exhibition he had doubtless a 
congenial topic in an English version of the " Speech 
of an Insurgent Plebeian " from Machiavelli's history 
of Florence. His diaries also show with what care 
he was training himself in composition, in phrase- 
ology, even in punctuation. By their simplicity, 
vigor and realism they rise considerably above the 
usual level of college productions. The next year 
he spoke again, his Dissertation being on the subject 
" Is a man in advance of his age fitted for his age." ^ 
His memory in his college days was not good, — a 

1 Wheelwright, p. 18. 



78 A LIFE OF FEANCIS PARKMAN 

fact most interesting in view of the remarkable 
memory he developed later under the pressure of 
necessity. 

But his practice in composition was not limited 
to the writing of academic themes; he made some 
mark likewise as a speaker and lecturer in the 
literary societies of the college. On one occasion 
he delivered as a lecture "a witty production, hav- 
ing for its subject ' The Puritans,' wherein he gave 
us in a very original and humorous style the front, 
flank, and rear of their offending." ^ 

He often spoke in debates, once on the question 
" Whether the Republic of the United States is likely 
to continue." It is not known which side he de- 
fended. His contemporaries described him as a 
trenchant and forcible speaker; as one, indeed, who 
by the strength of his expressions and the vehemence 
of his manner, seemed ready to "knock his oppon- 
ents down." His choice of topics, both in conver- 
sation and voluntary literary contributions, "even 
then showed symptoms of 'Injuns' on the brain. 
His tales of border life, wampum, scalps, and birch- 
bark were unsurpassed by anything in Cooper." ^ 
He graduated among the first twenty of his class, 
having attained " high distinction " in the depart- 
ment of history. 

Parkman's record in school and college gives 

^ Eeport of the Secretary of the " Institute of 1770," quoted by 
Mr. Wheelwright. 
2 Horatio J. Perry's Reminiscences. 



PREPARATION 79 

no evidence of genius in the proper sense of the 
word. While possessing more than the average 
ability in certain lines, he developed himself by 
long years of patient labor in a chosen field. The 
nature of his talents was unmistakable ; but the 
extent of liis subsequent success was apparently not 
anticipated even by his most intimate friends. On 
the other hand, neither did his achievements sur- 
prise his classmates. Professor Cliild, who was two 
or three years behind him, gave me what seems a 
very just report in saying that " Mr. Parkman's 
reputation in college spread downwards as a bright 
and original man." The shrewd grandmother of one 
of his classmates, whom he visited, said she con- 
sidered him " a young man of remarkably quick 
parts and very correct." 

His study of the law was another happy extension 
of education in the line of individual needs. Dr. 
Parkman, not approving of the literary and histori- 
cal ambition of his son, naturally wished him to 
follow one of the liberal professions, and as the 
young man had no taste for either medicine or 
theology, he entered the Harvard Law School on 
graduating from college. The decision was quite 
acceptable to liim, for he felt that the study of the 
law offered a mental training valuable to any man, 
and elements of knowledge especially useful to an 
historian. This course helped him in large ways, 
leading him to consider the rights of nations, the 
organization of governments, the principles and 



80 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

tendencies of national growth. Such a study of 
statesmanship was in fact necessary to one who 
would appreciate the opposing feudal and demo- 
cratic systems of colonization on this continent. It 
had, moreover, a happy influence over his mental 
growth in cultivating the judicial spirit, — a much- 
needed restraint upon so impetuous a temperament, 
and a balance for a constitutional tendency to pre- 
judice in certain matters. But the law was not 
allowed to interfere with his literary projects. 

''Here (writing in the Harvard Law School), while 
following the prescribed courses at a quiet pace, I en- 
tered in earnest on two other courses, one of general 
history, the other of Indian history and ethnology, and 
at the same time studied diligently the models of Eng- 
lish style, which various pursuits were far from excluding 
the pleasures of society." ^ 

He received his degree of Bachelor of Laws in 
1846, but although fully qualified to enter the bar, 
he never did so. A question may be raised as to 
whether he ever intended to practise. There is 
some evidence that he did in the few letters re- 
ferring to this project. He wrote to a classmate ^ 
in July, 1845 : " I shall live in town (Boston) 
and come out (to Cambridge) every day, intending 
to study law in earnest, which I have not done, 
and did not mean to do this last year." Again 
in September, 1846, at the close of his Oregon 

^ Parkman's autobiographic letter to Mr. Brimmer. 
- George S. Hale. 



PREPARATION 81 

Trail trip, he showed respect for his father's wishes 
by an intention to do something in this direction: 
" The law has certain claims on me also, which will 
be fully answered now that I have returned from 
my last journey — the last I suppose it will be for 
the present, though not so if I consulted my inclina- 
tion only." Both father and son still aimed at the 
law as late as 1847, but the pursuit of it was inter- 
rupted by Parkman's ill health and poor sight ; and 
probably he soon dismissed the plan entirely. Dr. 
Parkman, though never in sympathy with his son's 
literary ambition, was always indulgent, generous, 
and helpful. In a kindly letter of August 7, 1847, 
he appreciates Francis's first success as a writer, and 
at the same time reflects probably a mutual under- 
standing that the practice of law was only deferred. 
After describing some civilities shown to Eliot Park- 
man as the brother of the author of the " Oregon 
Trail " papers, which were then appearing in the 
" Knickerbocker," he goes on to say : 

''I confess, my dear Frank, I was much gratified by 
this ; but I should not be studious to write it out at 
length, did I not feel that under your trials and inability 
to do as much as you desire, you are entitled to know, 
that what you have done, and still can do, is fully appre- 
ciated. It is a consolation, when some of our plans are 
interrupted, to know that others have so well succeeded. 
And I congratulate you in having accomplished so much, 
and so successfully, amidst great discouragements." 

6 



82 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

It is clear from Parkman's own statements and his 
career that the law never had, and never could have, 
but a secondary place in his plans. 

In assuming so early the direction of his own 
education Parkman was a self-made scholar to an 
unusual degree, despite his regular graduation from 
Harvard. With many a student such conduct would 
have endangered one of the most important aims 
of education, — the acquisition of methodical habits. 
But this student was saved by his centralizing am- 
bition and his native earnestness and thoroughness. 



CHAPTER V 

Paekman's study of man began at an early age 
and steadily grew in attraction and importance for 
him to the end of his life. It embraced ethnology, 
as far as that science was then developed, and the 
personal observation of the character and conduct 
of individual men. 

His opportunities for studying ethnology while 
at college were very limited. The subject, at that 
time hardly more than named, had not yet growa- 
into the modern complex science of races. Harvard 
then offered neither any course of instruction, nor 
books of much value, nor even the advice and en- 
couragement of any professor having a special knowl- 
edge of the matter. In view of this deficiency 
Parkman used the term in a general sense, when 
he said in his autobiographic letter of 1886 ^ that 
while at the Law School, 1844-46, he pursued a 
course of " Indian history and ethnology." He prob- 
ably followed such an independent course of reading 
as was within his reach at the time ; and judging by 
the books he took from the college library, this 
course was more an historical study of the hfe, man- 

1 To his friend the late Hon. Martin Brimmer. 



84 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

nera, and customs of North American Indians than 
any attempt at a scientific understanding of races 
and the growth of civilizations. It is probable that 
he was then collecting the materials used in the 
introduction to "The Jesuits in North America," 
and in numerous notes in other volumes. He must 
have been one of the earliest to welcome the rapid 
development of ethnology that took place in the 
decade from 1850 to 1860. In "Vassall Morton," i 
written in 1856, he thus recorded the hero's awaken- 
ing to the larger interest in this science : 

"Thierry's 'Norman Conquest' had fallen into his 
hands soon after he entered college. The whole de- 
lighted him ; but he read and re-read the opening chapters, 
which exhibit the movements of the various races in 
their occupancy of the west of Europe. This first gave 
him an impulse towards ethnological inquiries. He soon 
began to find an absorbing interest in tracing the dis- 
tinctions, moral, intellectual, and physical, of different 
races, as shown in their history, their mythologies, their 
languages, their legends, their primitive art, literature, 
and way of life. The idea grew upon him of devoting his 
life to such studies." 

It is quite possible that Parkman here revealed his 
own experience and conceptions while in college ; 
but if he thus early recognized the weightier topics 
included in ethnology as essential to his equipment 
as historian, it is somewhat surprising to find so little 

1 Page 37. 



PREPARATION 85 

allusion to them in his diaries, and so few philosophi- 
cal considerations in his books. 

As we shall consider later his aversion for philo- 
sophizing, we must content ourselves at present with 
some further extracts from his diaries, showing the 
natural bent of his mind and the range of his obser- 
vations. Here was a budding historian full of intelli- 
gence, self-confidence, and independence, making his 
first journey in the great world through countries 
offering the greatest range of interests in life, art, and 
history. Yet his diaries and letters are singularly 
free from sophomoric wisdom; — they reveal very 
little concern for the deeper lessons of human Hfe, or 
for the broader interests of etlmology and history. 
The passages having any breadth of view in the 
study and comparison of races and civilizations are so 
few that we can give nearly all of them. In the 
mountains of Sicily for example, he came upon this 
scene : 

" It was a dark and gloomy day. Down in the bottom 
of the valley a herd of oxen were grazing — there was a 
contadino's hut of reeds on one of the abrupt hills near by. 
It was like the lodge of an Indian — the cattle were like 
a herd of buffalo; I could have thought myself on the 
prairies. But as we passed by the herd, there stood the 
herdsman in his shaggy breeches of goatskin, leaning on 
his staff, gazing at us through his tangled hair and un- 
shorn beard. His savage dogs, wild as himself, growled 
loudly as we rode by. The American frontier could show 
no such a group." 



86 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

At Rome he thus contrasted Americans with 
Englishmen : 

'' Yesterday was the 22d of February — the birthday of 
Washington. The Americans here must needs get up a 
dinner, with speeches, toasts, etc. It was like a visit 
home. There they sat, slight, rather pale and thin men, 
not like beef-fed and ruddy Englishmen : very quiet and 
apparently timid ; speaking low to the waiters instead of 
roaring in the imperative tone of John Bull. There was 
not a shadow of that boisterous and haughty confidence of 
manner that you see among Englishmen — in fact most 
of them seemed a little green." 

Another passage in the same vein is not without 
interest, in view of his later critical attitude towards 
his own countrymen : 

''There are numbers of American artists here, some of 
them fine fellows. In fact, it is some consolation after 
looking at the thin faces, narrow shoulders, and awkward 
attitudes of the 'Yankees,' to remember that in genius, 
enterprise, and courage — nay in bodily strength, they 
are a full match for the sneering Englishman. Would 
that they bore themselves more boldly and confidently. 
But a time will come when they may meet Europeans on 
an equal footing." 

At Basle he wrote : 

"Here in Basle you find none of the palaces and none 
of the dirt of an Italian city. No soldiers, except those 
of the garrison of the cit-adel and of the gendarmerie ; no 
beggars ; no spies in the cafes ; no vexatious question- 



PREPARATION 87 

ings of suspicious officials ; no anxious scrutiny into 
passports, or rummagings of baggage. The people walk 
about in the quiet streets with solemnity on their faces, 
and pipes in their mouths." 

At Milan: 

*' Civility is almost universal among these Italians — 
farther south it is manifested in gesticulations, takings-off 
of the hat, bowings, and reiterated exclamations of ' pad- 
rone,' which is equivalent to 'your servant, sir.' Here 
it is shown rather in deeds than in words — thank a man 
for any favor, — he does not scrape and flourish, and say 
padrone ; he only smiles quietly and replies ' niente fatto.' " 

An entry at Piacenza is exceptional for him in the 
range of interests touched upon : 

**Here again the striking difference between the towns 
of Northern and Soiithern Italy was manifested. The 
people looked as grave and solemn as the brick fronts of 
the palaces and churches. The town was just bestirring 
itself. Well-dressed men were thronging to the cafes 
for breakfast — the shops were being opened, and the 
market people coming in with their produce. Tall con- 
tadini were driving flocks of goats about the street, stop- 
ping and milking one into a little tin measure, whenever 
some housekeeper or the servant of some cafe came out to 
demand 'latte fresco.' There was an amusing concourse 
of market people in the public piazza, before the lofty 
front of the old government palace. Cheeses, meat, 
butter, eggs, and piles of live hens, tied neck and heels 
as you see them in Canada, were spread in every direc- 
tion over the pavement, surrounded by sellers and pur- 



88 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

chasers, both apparently half asleep. At a little distance 
were two long lines of women and men, each with a basket 
of eggs in hand, standing immovable with an expression 
of patient resignation, waiting for a purchaser. The 
men were little shrivelled farmers, in breeches and broad 
hats, with staffs in their hands, and dickeys standing up 
erect, like diminutive Englishmen. High above this 
motley swarm of helpless humanity rose the statue of 
some great lord of the Farnese family, seated on horse- 
back, holding his truncheon of command, as if at the 
head of an army, and looking as if one act of his single 
will, or one movement of his armed hand, would be 
enough to annihilate the whole swarm of poor devils 
below him." 

He thus contrasted Paris and London, in his own 
graphic way, by stating without comment facts that 
present the philosophy of the situation : 

*'When I got to London, I thought I had been there 
before. There in flesh and blood, was the whole host of 
characters that figure in Pickwick. Every species of 
cockney was abroad in the dark and dingy looking streets, 
all walking with their heads stuck forward, their noses 
turned up, their chins pointing down, their knee joints 
shaking, as they shuffled along with a gait perfectly 
ludicrous, but indescribable. The hackney coachmen 
and cabmen, with their peculiar phraseology, the walk- 
ing advertisements in the shape of a boy completely hid- 
den between two placards, and a hundred others seemed 
so many incarnations of Dickens' characters. A strange 
contrast to Paris ! The cities are no more alike than the 
* dining rooms ' of London, and the elegant restaurant 



PREPARATION 89 

of Paris — the one being a quiet dingy establishment 
where each guest is put into a box, and supplied with 
porter, beef, potatoes, and plum pudding. Eed faced old 
gentlemen of three hundredweight mix their 'brandy- 
go' and read the ' Times.' In Paris, the tables are set in 
elegant galleries and saloons and among the trees and 
flowers of a garden, and [here ?] resort coats cut by the 
first tailors and bonnets of the latest mode, whose occu- 
pants regale their delicate tastes on the lightest and most 
delicious viands. The waiters spring from table to table 
as noiselessly as shadows, prompt at the slightest sign; 
a lady, elegantly attired, sits within an arbor to preside 
over the whole. Dine at these places — then go to a 
London ' dining room ' — swill porter and devour roast 
beef ! " 

His only reference to the effects of environment 
concern not a race or a class, but two individuals. 
The first is an English sailor who had lived many 
years in Sicily, — " the stubborn English temper was 
well nigh melted away with his long sojourn among 
the Gentiles." At home in 1845 he found a subject 
that called forth an exceptional amount of reflection : 

" Where in America is to be found that spirit of sport 
and bluff hearty enjoyment that is seen in English 
country gentlemen and others ? Business here absorbs 
everything, and renders people incapable of every other 
pleasure. Officers of the army and navy are sometimes 
an exception. There is an old retired navy surgeon at 
Medford, who lives with his dogs and his gun, like an 
English Squire, enjoying himself in the same hearty 
manner. Business, too, swallows much that is noble. 



90 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

The somewhat chivalrous sentiments, the reference of all 
things to the standard of a gentleman's honor, a certain 
nobleness (though it may he joined with debauchery and 
blackguardism) is found among officers of armies. Our 
business men, on the other hand, have narrowed away all 
this. Thoughts bent on practical gains are not pleasant 
to contemplate, no matter how much virtue may accom- 
pany them." 

Turning now from the philosophical division of 
ethnology, we find that Parkman was a much closer 
student of the more picturesque division, — life, man- 
ners, actions. On landing at Gibraltar he plunged 
with avidity into this study, and with rare vividness 
and vigor gave his first impressions of European 
civilization, gained from a visit to Algeciras. 

''The middy and I passed the British line in a few 
moments, and found ourselves on genuine Spanish ground. 
Dirty scoundrels of soldiers, with rusty firelocks were 
lolling about some huts by way of guard. A long train of 
donkeys approached, each hidden under a pair of paniers 
full of charcoal. They all stopped before the guard-house 
where every panier was emptied, to see that no liquor was 
smuggled across the line. I was admiring the vigilance 
of the ragamuffin soldiery when we beheld a man mounted 
on a splendid horse advancing along the beach toward us. 
He was a noble-looking fellow, arrayed in a richly 
embroidered dress, wrapped in the huge Spanish cloak ; 
his horse's head, mane, and flanks were hung with tassels 
and spangled. He carried a carbine slung on his saddle 
behind him. He was a contrabandista — one who prac- 
tised smuggling in open defiance of the law. A moment 



PREPARATION 91 

after, he was joking and laughing with the ofl&cers at the 
guard-house. 

*' After three or four hours' ride, we approached the 
town where more Spanish soldiers were lounging in a 
group by the roadside. 'Carracho! los Ingleses !' With 
that they set a dog on us; finding this of no avail, they 
blew their trumpets and shouted to scare our horses. We 
turned around, and sat laughing at them. ' Carracho ! 
Carracho ! ' and one fellow not satisfied with this Spanish 
insult, made shift to exclaim ' Go to Hell ! ' Whereupon 
the whole took up the cry in chorus. As we rode through 
the narrow streets, similar maledictions were showered 
upon. us. Boys followed us, first begging a cuarto, and 
then shouting Carracho. It is a beautiful town — the 
houses white as snow, with bright green lattices and 
porticos, the streets paved with square hewn stone and 
without sidewalks. But the noblest sight was the Plaza, 
or public square, round which stand the public buildings. 
It was paved with coarse marble ; a large and beautiful 
column rose in the centre, in the midst of a space walled 
in from the public. All around, by the columns of the 
cathedral, about the porches of the houses, were stalls of 
merchants; and beggars in crowds roaring in the name of 
the Virgin for charity. We left this hospitable town 
behind, galloped at full speed round the beach, passing 
lepers by the wayside, soldiers, donkeys, black-eyed 
women, hedges of aloes, and groves of oranges, bare sun- 
burnt mountains, each crowned with its Moorish tower, — 
and long before the evening gun was fired were within the 
fortifications again. 

"... Here I had a specimen of every nation on earth, 
it seemed; around me. A dozen Moors with white turbans 



92 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

and slippered feet lolled one side; Jews by couples in 
their gabardines; the Spanish gentleman in his black 
cloak and sombrero — the Spanish laborer with his red cap 
hanging on one side of his head — the Spanish blackguard 
in bespangled tights and embroidered jacket. On benches 
among the trees officers and soldiers carried on successful 
love suits ; on the parade [ground] below English captains 
were showing forth good horsemanship to the best advan- 
tage. The red coats of soldiers appeared everywhere 
among the trees, and in the crowd below. There were 
women in cloaks of red and black — ladies with the man- 
tilla and followed by the duenna — no needless precaution 
— and the ten thousand more soldiers and civilians bond 
and free, man and woman and child. Not the least singu- 
lar of the group were the little black slaves belonging to 
the Moors, who were arrayed in a very splendid and out- 
landish attire ; following after their masters like dogs. 
Bands were stationed on the parade, and around a summer 
house among the trees. The evening gun dissolved the 
pageant — God Save the Queen rose on the air ; the crowd 
poured through the gates into the town." 

On liis tour about Sicily he had a guide, Luigi, of 
artistic, antiquarian, and numismatic tastes. As the 
man seemed to know everybody of note along the 
way, Parkman had many opportunities for visiting 
the homes of many classes of people, and he never 
neglected such a chance for studying domestic life. 
At an inn at Sciacca lie wrote : 

" The baron brought us a melon and some fine nuts as 
a present, which he did not disdain to place on the table 
himself. While our mules were saddling I went with 



PREPARATION 93 

Luigi to see the domestic establishment of bis friend. It 
was a large and reasonably clean bouse — some women 
were spinning in a spacious outer room, where some bens 
were cackling about the floor. The baroness received me 
in t^e inner room — the bedroom. She was a stout, rosy 
damsel, with good physical womanhood about her, and 
much beauty, though not over refined. She blushed, as 
though not used to entertaining strangers. Five or six 
holy pictures, and little wax images with lamps burning 
before them were about the room. Luigi took down one 
of the pictures of Santa Maria, — the patroness of Sciacca, 
which he piously kissed and put into his hip pocket, 
observing that now we should have good weather till we 
got to Palermo. The baroness got me another, by way of 
making assurance doubly sure. Thus armed against fate 
we rode away." 

Here is a passage that reflects well the distinctness 
of his impressions, and the occasional vigor of his 
language : 

" The country inns of Sicily are notorious. This one of 
Castel Termini was a fair sample, though in point of dirt, 
fleas, etc., it fell far short of some others. A Sicilian 
albergo is an ancient gloomy building of stone, like all the 
rest ; they usually have a little sign, or at least a branch 
of a tree stuck at the door, by the way of indicating their 
public character; but to look up at their half-decayed 
walls, and the small square windows thinly distributed 
over the front, you would take them for dungeons. Enter, 
and you stumble down a stone step into the kitchen — a 
spacious cavern, dark as Tartarus, with a floor of earth, 
and seldom any windows. Water jars, harness, and out- 



94 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

laiidish looking utensils are scattered about. Groups of 
idlers are crouching in the corner over a brazier of char- 
coal, and crucifixes and images with little lamps burning 
before them are hung about the walls. Close adjoining 
are large stone apartments for mules and asses, who have 
usually separate accommodations in the albergos, though in 
the private house a corner of the family room, usually the 
cleanest, is assigned them. Ask for * apartamenti,' and a 
woman leads you up a broken flight of stone steps to a 
room floored with a kind of cement. There is one window 
— one strongly secured door — a holy picture on the wall, 
and a bed full of fleas. You can seldom get anything to 
eat unless it be macaroni. This is an inn of the interior. 
The others are better. I speak from the experience of 
three nights, and I solemnly aver that the picture is not 
over-colored. I have forgotten a prominent feature of the 
establishment — the beggars. A decrepit beast, covered 
with dirt, unshaven, with bleared, gummy eyes, and 
covered all but the face in a rotten capote, thrusts a rosary 
into your face, and whines out of his withered throat a 
petition for alms. All about the door stand groups of 
idlers, enveloped in the same capotes, staring and convers- 
ing listlessly. This capote covered the face exactly like 
the hoods of mail you see in the old editions of Tasso and 
Ariosto — but the face of a Sicilian is anything but mar- 
tial or knightly." 

Apropos of Messina we find this vivid sketch : 

"I took my station outside one of the gates in the rear 
of the city, to look at the scum of humanity that came 
pouring out. All was filth, and age, and ruin — the walls, 
the tall gateway, with its images and inscriptions, the 



PREPARATION 95 

hovels at the top of the wall and in the ancient suburb, all 
seemed crumbling to decay. The orange and lemon 
groves in the ditch of the fortification were dingy and 
dirty — but away in the distance appeared the summit of 
the mountains almost as wild and beautiful as our moun- 
tains of New England. I thought of them, and in the 
revival of old feelings, half wished myself at home. I 
soon forgot, however, all but what was before my eyes, in 
watching the motley array that passed by me. Men and 
women literally hung with rags, half hid in dirt, hideous 
with every imaginable species of deformity, and bearing 
on their persons a population as numerous as that of 
Messina itself — these formed the bulk of the throng. 
Priests, with their black, broad-brimmed hats, and their 
long robes, fat and good-looking men — were the next 
numerous class. They draw life and sustenance from these 
dregs of humanity — just as tall pig-weed flourishes on a 
dunghill. Then there were mustachioed soldiers, very dif- 
ferent from the stately and sedate soldiers of England. 
There were men bearing holy pictures and images — 
ladies in swarms, whose profession was stamped on their 
faces — musicians with a troop of vagabonds in their rear ; 
all around the gateway were the tables of butchers, fruit- 
erers, confectioners, money changers, bootblacks, and a 
throng of dirty men, women, and children — shouts, 
yells, and a universal hubbub." 

Though enjoying many sights at Naples, he wrote 
little there that is significant. He took part in the 
carnival at Rome, driving with Theodore Parker and 
his wife. The King and his courtiers were the chief 
actors, while Parker and his wife seem to have been 



96 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

the cHef victims, — Parker having his spectacles 
broken and Mrs. Parker receiving a hard blow on the 
nose from sugarplums. Parkman visited all the 
objects of interest, watched the scenes of the streets 
and markets, saw some funeral processions and 
military reviews, studied life in the humblest and 
most wretched quarters of the city, took walks in the 
country and drank his bottle of Falernian wine with 
peasants at a tavern in Baise. 

This account of his visit to Virgil's tomb is too 
characteristic of him to be passed by : 

'' I met a laughable adventure here. Like a genuine 
tourist, I thought I would take away a memento of the 
poet, and seeing a bush which from its position had 
escaped the violating hand of former travellers, I deter- 
mined to get a branch of it. The tomb stands at the 
edge of a rock about two hundred feet high above the 
street; this bush was on the side of the cliff just outside 
an opening in the back part of the tomb. There was a 
stout iron bar to hold on by — no man of ordinary nerve 
and muscular strength would have the slightest cause of 
apprehension. So I told the cicerone to hold my coat, 
grasped the bar, leaned from the opening, and got hold of 
the plant, wliich I was about to secure when I heard a 
simultaneous shout from both guides, who sprang upon 
me and seized me fast. I looked round at them. Both 
were pale as ghosts, with their mouths wide open, and 
eyes staring out of their heads. I asked them what the 
devil was the matter — they replied by seizing me by the 
arms and shoulders and pulling me away from the hole. I 
got free from them by a sudden effort, but they sprang at 



PREPARATION 97 

me again, and began to roar for help. 'Oh! come this 
way Signore ! Come this way; you must not go there.' I 
was a good deal vexed, but could not help laughing at 
being mistaken for a madman. I thought I would, try a 
little intimidation, so aimed a blow with my fist at the 
nearest fellow's face. They dodged off a moment, but 
returned to the charge with faces doubly earnest and 
anxious and pinioned me from behind. ' Oh ! Signore ! ' 
they said, 'we don't want money; only come up with 
us to the gate.' I saw the folly of contending with the 
idea that had got possession of them, so told them I would 
go. Thus I went out from Virgil's tomb a prisoner. I 
thought my quiet compliance would have allayed their 
fears a little — no such thing : nothing would do but I 
must mount with them to the garden gate above. Half 
way up appeared a gang of men rushing in hot haste to 
secure the madman. They were soon about me, when, con- 
fiding in their numbers, they loosened my arms. I was 
resolved not to lose my relic of Virgil, so dispatched a boy 
to pluck a leaf from the door of the tomb, since the men 
would on no account suffer me to go myself. I got this 
memento of my adventure, and departed. I had some 
little suspicion that all this terror of my guides was 
counterfeited in order to give them a chance to pick my 
pockets ; but all my money was safe." 

Here are two scenes of the kind he liked to sketch, 
the first at an inn of Cara : 

''In the corner [of the public room] crouched two or 
three old crones, like living skeletons. An unshaven 
countryman sat on one side — fat and silent loungers from 
the town, with infant moustache ; shabby dandies in 

7 



98 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAX 

cloaks, children and dogs crouching together on the 
hearth. At a little distance two or three thin visaged and 
savage looking contadini stood erect and motionless in the 
glare of the fire. Our guide Giuseppe sat drinking wine 
at the long tables ranged around the barn-like room. He 
had a very pretty girl to wait on him, who would come 
from time to time and stoop over the fire so as to show to 
the best advantage her classic features and the enormous 
silver pin in her hair. Hunt ^ and I sat telling each 
other college stories and recalling college recollections till 
the people had withdrawn from the room, and left us 
almost alone, in front of a glowing pile of half consumed 
embers." 

At Subiaco he wrote : 

"We came suddenly upon Subiaco. It stood on the 
top of a detached rocky hill among the mountains. Goats, 
cattle, trains of mules and asses, women with jars of water 
on their heads, old woodmen with the heavy crooked chop- 
ping knife in their girdles, and a bundle of fagots on their 
shoulders, were coming down the different pathways from 
the mountains toward the gate of the town, for it was near 
sunset. The town was already in shadow, except the 
castle at the top. 

" All this was very well : get within the gate and the 
scene changed. A crowded pile of high and crumbling 
stone houses — streets so steep that a horse cannot ascend 
them, and answering the purpose of a common sewer for 
all the filth of the inhabitants, so narrow, too, that a strip 
of the red sky could scarce be seen between the tottering 
roofs — here was Subiaco; and not Subiaco alone, but 

1 William M. Hunt, the artist. 



PREPARATION 99 

Italian country towns in general, as far as my observation 
goes. The women, with water jars, were gathered around 
the town fountain, more were seated about the corners in 
a little public square spinning. More still were kneeling, 
singing vespers in the church. The men were lounging 
about in red breeches, smoking and staring." 

Here is his first confession of the charms of vaga- 
bondizing in Europe, at Milan, — though he soon 
brought himself up with a very characteristic return 
to the rugged life of his beloved New England : 

"This morning when the whole city was quiet, the 
shops shut in honor of Sunday, the people issuing from 
the Cathedral, gentlemen walking listlessly about, and 
porters and contadini sitting idle at the edge of the side- 
walks, there was a group of gentlemen taking their coffee 
under awnings in front of each of the cafe's in the piazza 
before the Cathedral. This vagabond way of breakfasting 
and seeing the world at the same time, is very agreeable. 
There is no place where you can be more independent than 
in one of these cities — when you are hungry there is 

always a restaurant and a dinner at a moment's notice 

when you are thirsty there is always a cafe at hand. If 
you are sleepy, your room awaits you — a dozen sneaking 
waiters are ready at your bidding, and glide about like 
shadows to do what you may require in hope of your 
shilling when you go away. But give me Ethan Crawford 
or even Tom, in place of the whole race of waiters and 
gargons." 

The democratic and wholesome atmosphere of 
Switzerland seems to have pleased him as much as 
the scenery : 



100 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

''I never left any place with more regret than these 
mountains [about Andeer]. Descending into the wider 
valleys of the Grisons, the scenery was not less magnifi- 
cent, though of a different character. At Coire, the capi- 
tal of the Canton, I was reminded that I was no longer in 
Italy. A servant stood at the head of the stairs in the 
large inn there, welcoming each guest with a * good even- 
ing,' and ushering him into a large low wooden apartment, 
where some thirty men and women were smoking, eating 
or lounging at the tables and benches. Boys stood ready 
to receive hats and cloaks ; and waiters attended on each 
new comer to know what he would have. All was ease, 
good nature, and equality. The old Germans and Swiss 
grunted over their beer pots, and puffed at their pipes. 
The young ones laughed with the servant girls. A 
Frenchman gulped down his bowl full of soup — sprang to 
the window when he heard the postilion's horn, bounded 
back to finish one more tumbler of wine, and then, seizing 
his cane, dashed out in hot haste. A prim, strutting little 
German student, stalked to the window to watch him, pipe 
in hand and a complacent grin on his face ; then turned to 
discourse in a half patronizing, half gallant way with the 
girls." 

There is but one important passage concerning 
Paris, the place in all Europe that most concerned, his 
future labors : 

" I have been a fortnight in Paris and seen it as well as 
it can be seen in a fortnight. Under peculiarly favorable 
circumstances, too ; for it was the great season of balls 
and gaieties, and I had a guide moreover who knows 
Paris from top to bottom — within and without. I like to 



PREPARATION 101 

see a thing done thoroughly. If a man has a mind to 
make a fool or a vagabond of himself, he can do it admir- 
ably in Paris; whereof I have seen many instances. If a 
man has a mind to amuse himself there is no place like it 
on earth; diversions of every character, form, and degree 
waiting for him at every step ; let him taste them — then 
get into the diligence and ride away, or stay, and go to 
the devil." 

Paris became more attractive to him later by rea- 
son of its close connection with his labors and its 
innumerable interests to any student of life. He 
thus wrote to his sister Mary in 1859 of the way in 
which he spent the most of his leisure time there, — 
not in society, galleries, or libraries, but in studying 
street life. The letter is characteristic of his habit 
of dismissing the subject of health in a few words ; 
one would never suspect it was written in a period of 
the greatest mental and physical suffering. 

''I am a little less lame. I get on well enough. The 
omnibuses of Paris — of which there are about seven 
hundred — are made with railings, etc., in such a way 
that, with a little science, I can swing myself to the top 
with the arms alone, and here I usually spend the better 
part of the day smoking cigarettes and surveying the 
crowds below. I have formed an extensive acquaintance 
among omnibus cads and the like, whom I find to be first- 
rate fellows in their way — also have learned pretty 
thoroughly the streets of Paris, where much may be seen 
from the top of an omnibus. When hungry or thirsty, I 
descend to any restaurant, cafe, or ' buffet ' that happens 
to be near, whether of low or high degree if only clean. 



102 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

In fair weather an hour or two may always be spent pleas- 
antly enough between three and five o'clock, in the open 
air under the porches of the cafes on the boulevards, where 
all Paris passes by." 

We may close these extracts concerning his study 
of manners and customs with the following sketch ; 
the subject could hardly fail to appeal to his sense 
of humor after his experience of European martial 
scenes. 

<' <Cornwallis' at Brighton, October 18, 1844. I was 
there before the militia had gone off. Some had the 
large skirted coats of revolutionary officers, some wore 
battered helmets, some three-cornered hats, some noth- 
ing. They had every variety of weapon, from blunder- 
buss to rusty saw; and were of all ages and sizes. A 
more ragamufiin assemblage I never saw. ' Officers to 
the front,' exclaimed the general on his horse. The 
long line of ragamuffins who stood leaning on their rifles 
or muskets in every variety of outlandish costume, looked 
as if they had never an officer among them. But at the 
word, a number of fellows straddled out from the line, 
with yellow breeches and red coats; or with false beards, 
and dirty shirts, armed with axes, swords, or guns. 
These marched up to the front and faced gravely towards 
the general. * Gentlemen officers,' he began, etc. The 
address over, the officers withdrew, and the music struck 
up, at which the whole line of ragamuffins got under 
way and marched straggling off the ground, just as the 
sun went down." 

Parkman's study of character in individual men 
and women was an interest second only to his lite- 



PREPARATION 103 

rary labors. It not only gratified an inherited taste 
and faculty for reading men, but also formed an 
important element of his preparation as historian. 
It was, besides, the chief means by which one of his 
reserved nature could be brought into intimate con- 
tact with humanity outside of a restricted circle of 
friends and relations; for his sympathies were not 
strong and broad enough by themselves to make 
him a lover of all men. It remained throughout 
his life a study of unflagging interest, being furthered 
by his tastes, faculties and opportunities. For his 
personal traits were fortunate ; he attracted men by 
an unfeigned interest in them, thus inducing them 
to open their minds to liim. He was singularly ready 
to listen to others, though he rarely if ever opened 
his own reserved nature in return for their confi- 
dences. Then his social propensities saved him from 
becoming a recluse, and counteracted the danger to 
manliness that lurks in the study. Again, circum- 
stances brought him all the opportunities he could 
desire. At his father's hospitable board he met 
many men of distinction ; at college he was always 
welcome among his classmates ; he had a wide circle 
of family connections and friends ; he was a member 
of various societies and clubs; and his travels at 
home and abroad brought him in contact with many 
national types, many classes, many interesting indi- 
viduals. His maladies often necessitated a great 
deal of self-denial as to society ; but he continued to 
the last, as far as his health allowed, to follow his 



104 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

social inclinations, saying that one should know as 
many people as possible. Throughout life the read- 
ing of fiction was an important element of his amuse- 
ments, while historical researches and writing de- 
manded a continual estimation of men from their 
words and actions ; and his works show with what 
care he conceived and executed the strong outlines 
of his characters. 

Parkman's skill in reading men came largely from 
persistent and careful practice. His first effort in 
this direction was another happy coincidence of boy- 
ish tastes with the subsequent needs of a historian. 
When about twelve years of age he with some 
equally youtliful companions fitted up the loft of 
his father's unused coach house, and founded " The 
Star Theatre." The boys painted their own scenery 
and made most of their own "properties." The 
name, derived from the eminence of every member 
of the company, was dul}^ signified by a tinsel star 
on a strip of green cambric crossing the stage above 
the curtain. Parkman displayed both energy and 
skill in this organization, — as mechanic in rigging 
up the curtain, as chemist in managing the colored 
lights for the scene, as artist wielding the whitewash 
brush, and finally as actor, chiefly in women's roles, 
for which he is said to have been well fitted by the 
possession of a high voice ; and if we may judge by 
the daguerreotype of him as a young man, repro- 
duced in this volume, he must have had unusual 
charms of face and person. The company was sue- 



PREPARATION 105 

cessful. It seems to have given a performance 
nearly every Saturday afternoon, and sometimes on 
Wednesday also, diuing several months of 1835-36, 
and 1836-37, The audience consisted mostly of 
young relatives and friends, but it often contained 
others more critical and mature, and now and then 
a matron accompanied by her entire school. The 
first season opened with " The Dumb Boy of Genoa," 
in which young Parkman distinguished himself in 
the title role, played altogether in pantomime. Only 
a small part of the repertory can now be recalled, 
but it included " The Golden Farmer," " My Fellow 
Clerk," and " The Chicken " (translated from the 
French by F. Lee), also Shakspere's "Taming of 
the Shrew," in which Parkman played Katharina. 
Here is the bill announcing one of the most suc- 
cessful performances : — 

Star Theatre. 

Benefit of Mr. F. Parkman. 

On Saturday, May 7th, will be performed the 
celebrated play of 

Bombastes Furioso. 

" Whoever dares these boots displace 
Must meet Bombastes face to face." 

Bombastes (a general) .... J. C. Shaw. 

Artaxomines (king of Eutophia) . C. Shimmin. 

Fusbos (Minister of State) . . . G. Parkman. 

Distafina F. Parkman. 

To conclude with the much admired play of 



106 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAK 

King^s Bridge Cottage. 

Mr. Eicbardson S. Eliot. 

Frederick J. C. Shaw. 

Percy C. Shimmin. 

Valmo7'6 i^. Parkman. 

Cato W. A. Marston. 

Mary F. Minot. 

Maj. O'Bryan (a British of&cer in disguise), 

G. Parkman. 

Mr. C. F. Shimmin respectfully announces his 
benefit for Wednesday, May 18th. 

F. Minot, Printer. 

Parkman's Distafina is still remembered as a 
charming impersonation. These theatricals, con- 
tinued for a considerable length of time and evi- 
dently developed with much study and pains for 
schoolboys, were of course undertaken solely for 
amusement. But as Parkman entered into them 
with the thoroughness and zeal tliat he brought to 
everything he did, they probably had some influence 
in awakening his love of the study of character — 
just as his boyhood adventures in the Middlesex 
Fells cultivated his love of nature. 

His diaries contain some very significant bits of 
appreciation of character. They show tliis study to 
have been one of his deepest interests, probably 
deeper than any other outside of history. He began 
to record his observations as early as 1842, giving 
them increasing space and emphasis until they be- 
came the chief element of his note-books in 1841-45. 



PREPARATION 107 

We may begin our extracts with the following 
account of the puppet shows of Naples, and then pass 
on from these rough sketches of strangers to his more 
finished portraits of familiar acquaintances. 

''I went to-night to the teatro Sebeto — an establish- 
ment consisting of a pit, eight boxes, and a gallery where 
none but men sit. The piece was a deep tragedy, full of 
love, jealousy, and murder, dungeons, trap-doors, etc. 
Pulcinella here assumed the character of a pilgrim. He 
always wears a black vizard which covers his face as far as 
the end of his nose, leaving the lower part bare. His 
entree, which was in the midst of the most tragic part, 
was greeted by a loud laugh. The father of the distressed 
lady was busy in bemoaning his afflictions on his knees, 
with hands clasped. Pulcinella kneels down a little 
behind him, and caricatured all his motions most ludi- 
crously. In the next scene the distracted husband, whose 
lady has proved unfaithful, encounters the j)ilgrim and 
makes at him with drawn sword, taking him for the 
betrayer of his beloved. Pulcinella meets him with his 
pilgrim's staff, which he brandishes at him in a most 
laughable manner, turning into ridicule all his anger and 
distress. The audience roar with delight, but do not 
applaud. Pulcinella then has a scene to himself with two 
girls, each of whom falls in love with him, and treat him 
to sugarplums. Some of his evolutions were very particu- 
larly indecent. After this he did not appear again. 
Tragedy resumed her reign undisturbed . . . Pulcinella 
is a most original character. His ridicule does not spare 
the hero and the heroine themselves. In a terrific scene 
of incantation and sorcery which I saw to-day, Pulcinella 



108 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

pretended at first to be very mucli frightened, but seized 
an opportunity to knock over Death himself, who was ris- 
ing out of a fiery pit to seize him. He kicked a Sultan in 
the face. He is always present in every tragic or pathetic 
scene, turning the whole to ridicule by his ludicrous cari- 
catures, or his affected sympathy. He is always planning 
tricks to get his best friends into a scrape." 

Here is one of his most graj^hic pages, written at 
Bologna : 

"The diligence was full of Frenchmen. In one day 
and one night we got to Bologna. Here, in the yard of 
the office, among the soldiers and other officials who stood 
with folded arms listlessly staring at the strangers, was an 
animal nearly seven feet high, with a face like a large 
baboon. , . . His motions, too, exactly resembled a large 
monkey's. He bounded about, swinging himself up and 
down the diligence, tossing about heavy trunks and bales, 
as if they were feathers, with his long muscular arms. He 
kept his eyes rolling about in his head, glancing at every- 
thing in the yard, with an expression of infinite alacrity 
and anxiety, and whenever he saw anything that met his 
disapproval he would jump to rectify it with a sort of 
angry chattering in his throat. He was a deaf mute." 

In London he found this subject for his pen : 

"Walk out in the evening, and keep a yard or two be- 
hind some wretched clerk, who with nose elevated in the 
air, elbows stuck out at right angles, and the pewter knob 
of his cane playing upon his under lip, is straddling his 
bow-legs over the sidewalk with a most majestic air. Get 
behind him and you see his dignity greatly disturbed. 



PREPARATION 109 

First he glances over one of his narrow shoulders — then 
over the other — then he edges o££ to the other side of the 
walk, and turns his vacant lobster eyes full upon you, then 
he passes his hand over his coat tail — and finally he 
draws forth from his pocket the object of all this solicitude 
in the shape of a venerable and ragged cotton handker- 
chief, which he holds in his hand, to keep it out of harm's 
way. I have been thus taken for a pickpocket more than 
a dozen times to-night — not the less so for being respec- 
tably dressed, for these gentry are the most dashy men on 
the Strand. There is an interesting mixture of vulgarity 
and helplessness in the swarm of ugly faces you see in the 
streets — meagre, feeble, ill-proportioned, or not propor- 
tioned at all, the blockheads must needs put on a game 
air and affect the ' man of the world ' in their small way. 
I have not met one handsome woman yet, though I have 
certainly walked more than fifty miles since I have been 
here. Elsewhere Englishmen are tall, strong, and manly; 
here the crowd that swarms through the streets are like 
the outcasts of a hospital." 

We shall discuss later the fact that Parkman 
rarely expresses sympathy or admiration for men, 
either as nations, classes, or individuals. For the 
present we offer the following three sketches as the 
only exceptions to this rule in his diary. While tak- 
ing a drive in Sicily he met with this experience : 

" At Giarri, a large place where we stopped to rest the 
horses, we were beset of course by beggars. One little 
rascal, about six years old — whose clothes, if they an- 
swered the purpose of warmth, answered no other purposes 
for which clothing is intended, followed me about for half 



110 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

an hour, like a little dog. I could not muster sternness 
enough to order him away with effect — and he was 
too small to kick into the gutter — so he went on, beg- 
ging for a carlino. At last he began slyly to mock, for 
my edification, the grave countenance and stately air of 
Don Mateo, and did it so ludicrously that I stood laugh- 
ing at him. At this he summoned a larger boy to his 
side, who hummed a tune, while he danced a sort of horn- 
pipe on the pavement. I could forbear no longer, but 
gave him a grano — about the third part of a cent. A 
crowd of loungers had mustered to witness the performance 
of this manikin, who was about a foot and a half high. 
There they stood in their brown capotes, looking gravely 
from out of their hoods at the spectacle of my unjjaralleled 
generosity, which was a signal for action. I was half- 
stunned with supplications from men, women, and chil- 
dren, and glad, after cursing them a little, to escape into 
the carriage. Among the rest was a girl, most abominably 
ugly, who appeared to be a mute. I threw her a large 
copper coin — the young Spaniard added a couple more, 
which threw the girl into a perfect frenzy of delight. She 
danced about among the crowd flinging both hands into 
the air — then kissing the coins, and pressing them 
against her breast ; tossing them on the ground before 
her, and gathering them up again; till her ugly face 
seemed absolutely good looking with the excess of her 
pleasure." 

This sketch was taken on the steamer when leav- 
ing Palermo for Naples : 

''An old monk was on board, among the crowd of 
nobles and exquisites, with the cord of St. Francis hold- 



PREPARATION 111 

ing his tattered rags together. He had a little contri- 
bution box in his hand, and was gliding about in a 
crouching posture, with his cap in his hand, begging 
for his patron's benefit. He would look up into the 
faces of an inattentive group with an humble and sup- 
plicating countenance, just like a starved dog expecting 
a piece of meat at a dinner table. A pleasant voyage 
and perfect safety was to be the reward of all who dropped 
a grano into the box. My heart was moved with compas- 
sion toward the old fellow, he looked so humble and so 
miserable. I tried to catch his eye to give him some- 
thing — but my unwonted feeling of benevolence toward 
a Sicilian beggar was destined to bear no fruit — for just 
then all visitors were warned off. The old monk tum- 
bled himself over the side into the boat of a charitable 
facchino." 

Another page reveals pleasantly his ready appre- 
ciation of manliness wherever it may be found : 

"This morning as I got half asleep into the post car- 
riage, at Colico [or Calico], I was saluted by a hon giorno 
by a small voice from a dark corner, where I discovered 
by groping about a fine boy of thirteen or fourteen with 
great promise of muscles yet undeveloped. He was a 
young Swiss, who spoke Italian ; so I began to talk with 
him. He spoke in a frank and bold manner. I asked 
him if he did not mean to be a soldier. He said he 
should have to, for all the Swiss were obliged to serve 
from the age of eighteen to twenty-four. He was mis- 
taken; the Swiss military system resembles ours. But 
he meant to be an officer because he was noble. The 
conductor at this moment brought a lantern to the win- 



112 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

dow which showed a handsome Quentin Durward-like hoy, 
but clothed in rough homespun, and clouted shoes that 
did not look much like nobility, and reminded me of 
Quentin's pretensions. He had not heard of America, and 
inquired with great curiosity how far it was, and how long 
the term of military service was. I told him the period 
that we are expected to be in readiness, which astonished 
him exceedingly. ' Corpo di Bacco ! piti di quarant' anni 
di militare ! Ma quell' e hello ! piti di quarant' anni di 
militare ! ' He said he was a Calvinist and that all of 
his religion were considered as devils — come diavoli — 
by the people around. He fell asleep at last, and did 
not wake till we stopped at Chiavenna, when he jumped 
up, shook himself, took his stick, and walked off to the 
mountains." 

Parkman's appreciation of the feminine character, 
which was both ardent and discriminating, found 
but few expressions in his diaries ; women were not 
then the important element of his life and work 
that they subsequently became. Of Sicilian women 
he said: 

" One passed me in the church of the Capuchin Con- 
vent, with the black eye, the warm rich cheek, and the 
bright glance that belong to southern climates and are 
beautiful beyond all else." 

Of the women in Naples he observed : 

" There is something particularly attractive about 
these women, who are seldom, however, handsome, prop- 
erly speaking — but there is the devil in their bright 
faces and full rounded forms." 



PREPARATION 113 

The charm and grace of Italian ladies evidently 
went to his youthful heart in the carnival at 
Rome : 

'Tew had any regular features, but there was an 
expression of heart and spirit, and a loftiness beside 
which did not shame their birth. They flung their 
flowers at you with the freest and most graceful action 
imaginable. To battle with flowers against a laughing 
and conscious face — showering your ammunition thick 
as the carriage slowly passes the balcony — then strain- 
ing your eyes to catch the last glance of the black-eyed 
witch and the last wave of her hand as the crowd closes 
around her — all this is no contemptible amusement." 

His aversion to certain types of women was as 
strong as his admiration for others ; and his criticism 
was often expressed with a trenchant force that left 
no room for doubt. Thus in 1845 he made this 
observation of a noisy party in the cars in his own 
state of Massachusetts: 

''Is not a half educated vulgar weak woman a disgust- 
ing animal ? Where there is no education at all and no 
pretension, the matter is all very well — where high edu- 
cation and good sense are united it is very well indeed; 
but the half and half genteel — damn them ! " 

As against this we may put the following sketch 
of Mrs. General Riedesel, taken from his review of 
her memoirs. It seems by its sureness of touch as 
well as by its harmony with his known taste, to be 
the portrait of a woman he would have liked very 

8 



114 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

much ; in fact it seems to me to come nearer than 
any other writing of his to the expression of his 
ideal woman, hardly excepting the heroine of " Vas- 
sall Morton." 

"Her graceful and feminine character was braced by 
an admirable courage, and a spirit which must have made 
her a very piquant companion. She had resources for 
every emergency, made friends everywhere, and appears 
to have been equally mistress of the situation in the 
backwoods of Virginia, and in the family circle of King 
George III. . . . She was too sensible, natural, and pure 
to be a prude." 

Parkman's memory of the eye, so remarkable for 
scenery, was equally good for faces. It is related 
that about 1885 he one day sat down to dine at a 
friend's house next to a lady whom he had not ob- 
served with much care. Presently she said : " I see, 
Mr. Parkman, that you do not recognize me." He 
then looked attentively at her face and at once re- 
plied : " The last time I talked with you was on your 
father's piazza at Palermo in 1843." 

His more intimate study of men in friends and 
acquaintances shows him to have been free from 
class prejudice in personal relations. What he de- 
manded first and last was manliness, character ; the 
external circumstances of wealth, birth, education, 
set up no barriers between him and any man or 
woman ; hauteur was never seen in his feeling or 
conduct. Any worthy individual, though from a 
class for which Parkman may have had no sym- 



PREPARATION 115 

pathy, became interesting to him as soon as per- 
sonal relations were established. He showed interest 
in the history, character, plans, conduct, and welfare 
of all his acquaintances, and often of their childi-en 
as well. He was catholic in taking into his friend- 
ship men of all kinds, — the grave and the gay, the 
exuberant and the reserved, the cool and the fiery. 
On the steamer going from Malta to Messina in 
1843, he fell into pleasant, even friendly, relations 
with a Sicilian who had been a cook in Murdock's 
tavern in Boston, and some of his warmest expres- 
sions of regard and admiration are those concerning 
his guide on the Oregon Trail journey. Besides 
ending the book with praises of tliis illiterate man 
as a true gentleman, he says : " I have never, in the 
city or the wilderness, met a better man than my 
noble and true-hearted friend, Henry Chatillon." ^ 

His diary on this journey through Europe in 1844 
contains the longest of his sketches of character. 
He thus described his guide and muleteer in Sicily, 
Luigi Rannesi : 

<<Luigi, a diminutive Sicilian, with a thin brown face 
and an air of alertness about every inch of liim, began to 
jabber Itahan with such volubility that I could not under- 
stand a word. He must needs exhibit every article of the 
provisions he had got ready for the journey, extolling the 
qualities of each — and they deserved all his praises — 
always ended by pounding himself on the breast, rolling 
up his eyes and exclaiming ' Do you think Luigi loves 

1 The Oregon Trail, ed. 1849, p. 23. 



116 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

money ? No ! Luigi loves honor ! ' and then launching 
forth into interminable eulogiums of the country we were 
going to see, and the adventures we should meet there. . . 
He talked and gesticulated half frenzied because he found 
I could not understand half he said; then seized my hand 
which he dutifully kissed and left me to my meditations." 

On approaching Girgenti : 

' ' One of his fits of enthusiasm had taken possession of 
Luigi. He began to lash his mule and drive him along 
over mud and rocks at such a rate that I thought him mad, 
till he told me that it was necessary — fa hisogno — to get 
to Girgenti before the Englishmen. 

'" Corragio ! my brave mule! Corragio, S ignore,' he 
shouted. ' We shall be the victors ! ' At that he drove full 
speed up the steep hill towards the gate. Nothing would 
stop him. He leaped over ditches, — scrambled through 
mud and stones, shouting ' Corragio ' at the top of his lungs. 
At last an insuperable gully brought him up short. He 
clapped his hand to his forehead exclaiming ' Santissima 
Maria ' in a tone of wrath and despair — then recovered 
his spirits and dashed off in another direction. We suc- 
ceeded. When we got to the top the carriage (containing 
the Englishmen) was a quarter of a mile off, and Luigi 
shouted ' Vittoria ! ' as he rode into the gate as much 
elated as if he had accomplished some great achievement. 

"Luigi brings me pockets full of ancient money, and 
seems greatly astonished at my indifference. As for him- 
self he is rabid [as a numismatic archaeologist]. He 
dodges into every house and shop, inquiring for ' Antica 
moneta; ' stops contadini at work with the same question; 
he has scraped together an enormous bag full for which he 



PREPARATION 117 

paid scarce anything, perfectly familiar as he is with its 
true value and the customs of the country. His enthusi- 
asm embraces every object, far and wide. He raves of love 
on the road, tells how he eloped with his wife, sings love 
songs ; then falls into the martial vein ; shouts ' Corragio ' ; 
defies the wind, rain, and torrents. He enters into all my 
plans with a most fervid zeal, leaving me nothing to do. 
Every night he comes upstairs bringing all kinds of dresses 
and utensils of the people for me to look at. Sometimes 
he comes in with a handful of old coins, telling me with a 
chuckle that he had bought them for 'pochissimo ' ; kiss- 
ing them repeatedly in the exultation of a good bargain. 
I have lived most sumptuously ever since I have been with 
him. He puts the whole inn into a ferment, rakes the 
town to find the best of everything and waits on table with 
an eulogium of every dish. 'Ah! Siguore,' he repeats, 
* do you think Luigi loves money ? No ! Luigi loves 
honor ! ' He has something to give to every beggar he 
meets. In short, the fellow is a jewel, and shall be my 
particular friend henceforth. 

''I went with him to the house of a Signore Politi, who 
is fairly rampant with antiquarian zeal, and deeply en- 
amoured moreover of the fine^arts. The studio of this 
virtuoso presented a formidable display of old pictures, 
plaster casts, vases, fragments of statues, and a confused 
medley of indescribables. He was sitting at his easel 
copying a Madonna of Guido. Luigi pulled off his hat 
with great respect, advanced, and drawing an antique 
cameo from the multitudinous folds of his handkerchief 
presented it as ' Un piccolo complimento ' to Signore. The 
virtuoso examined it through his spectacles, expressed his 
approval, and coolly pocketed it, leaving me in equal ad- 



118 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

miration at Luigi's making a ' complimento ' of such value 
and at Politi's cavalier-like style of accepting it. The 
mystery was soon solved — it was like Turkish or Indian 
presents ; Luigi expected as a matter of course a ' compli- 
mento ' in return. In fact he retired with a handkerchief 
full of antiquities. He told me he always carried some- 
thing with him, ' per fare un complimento ' to the Signori 
who honored him with their acquaintance. He knows 
everybody, from princes to beggars. 

" Luigi came up in the evening, to hold * un discorso ' 
with me according to his custom. He was in his usual 
state of excitement. He takes a glass of wine in his hand 
'viva 1' onora, signorino mio,' rolling up his eyes and 
flourishing his hands, 'viva Bacco; viva Dio ; viva il 
consolo Americano ! ' and so on, the finale being a seizure 
and kissing of my hand, after which he inquires if I shall 
want him, looks about to see that all is right, kisses my 
hand again and goes off." 

The following passage telling their nearest approach 
to robbery gives another touch to his sketch of 
Luigi : 

" We were riding past an old house of contadini when 
Luigi suddenly reined back his mule upon mine, uttering 
in a whisper of consternation, ' Santissima Maria / ' I 
looked at him and saw that the natural muddy brown of 
his thin face was changed to a most cadaverous yellow. 
I asked him what was the matter. He made no answer, 
but shouted aloud for Michele — who was a little way be- 
hind among the trees — and then began to cross himself 
and mutter prayers. I could see nothing except a man 
with a gun walking away from the road toward a group of 



PREPARATION 119 

a dozen contadini who were standing in front of the shat- 
tered house. We had left them far behind, before Luigi 
was so far recovered as to tell me that a man had pointed 
a gun at him from the bushes, but had desisted when he 
saw Michele. He added that next to the mountains 
around Palermo this place was the most notorious for 
robbers in all Sicily. I do not for a moment imagine that 
the fellow intended us bodily harm." 

Here is a note on Luigi's attendant muleteer : 

''The way was enlivened by the edifying singularities 
of the muleteer Michele, who walked along talking with- 
out intermission for an hour together, though no one 
listened or replied. He interrupted his discourse only to 
belabor his mule and curse him in Sicilian. When we 
came to a steep place, he would take a firm hold of the 
beast's tail with one hand, while he belabored him with a 
rope's end that he held in the other, and thus they would 
scramble up together. Where the mud was more than a 
foot deep Michele would place both hands on the mule's 
rump and vault with a sort of grunt upon his back ; 
wiggle himself about for a while to find a comfortable seat, 
and then burst forth with some holy canticle in praise of 
a Saint." 

The study of life and character continues, after 
history, to be the most important element of his 
diaries all through 1844, 1845, and 1846, up to his 
departure from St. Louis for the Rocky Mountains, 
but his pages contain veiy few passages worthy of 
quotation. The fact of chief interest is that the 
historian devoted so much time and pains to the 



120 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

study of character and contemporary life. He 
sketched some of his classmates, his fellow students 
in the Law School; he attended public meetings, 
as those of the Millerites and Fourierites, not because 
he was interested in the causes, but to study men, 
both collectively and individually. The manners, 
the conversations, the traits of mind, the quality, the 
motives of men, all attracted his searching eye. His 
observation was directed impartially to the most 
diverse characters, — stage drivers, soldiers, Indians, 
sailors, priests, farmers, scholars, artists, the grave, 
the gay, the old and the young, — everybody was 
grist for his mill. 

Here is a page written in 1845 : 

''J. — His vanity and love of display joined with energy 
combine to make a fool of him. He affects the man of 
the world — goes always in full dress, and though he has 
no sportsmanlike propensities keeps a breed of dogs about 
him, and affects the connoisseur, also a fine equipage. 
He is foolishly proud of money and his supposed rank in 
society, and lets drop no opportunity of showing his 
superiority. From constantly pushing himself into the 
foremost places and affecting to command everywhere, he 
has raised a host of enemies. His vanity impels him to 
lie enormously. I suspect him of not being remarkably 
brave, though I should never have made the remark but 
for some boastful lies he had lately been telling about a 
street battle with some fellows who insulted him. He is 
hospitable and bountiful, though ostentatious. '^ 



PREPARATION 121 

We may close these extracts concerning Ms study 
of character with this passage written at St. Louis, 
1846, just before his departure on the Oregon Trail 
trip: 

" How infinite is the diversity of human character ! 
Old Mr. C. of nearly eighty, lively, bright, and active — 
the old man goes about rejoicing in his own superiority 
to age — wrapt up in himself, unobservant, impenetrable, 
impassive. His companion was the reverse — young, 
silent through bashfulness, observing all, feeling all, and 
constantly in hostility to external influences, — though 
resolute and determined, acting ever under the burden of 
constitutional diffidence. How hostile is such a quality 
to a commanding character. It is the mind as it stamps 
its character on the bearing and manner that carries 
weight; the bold, unhesitating, confident expression has 
authority — not the forced, sharp, painful expression of 
resolution struggling against difiidence. Some men have 
a sort of power from their very vanity — they are too dull, 
too impassive to feel a repressing influence from other 
minds — and, thinking themselves the greatest men on 
earth, they assume a port and voice that imposes a sort of 
respect. Others there are who, with many of the internal 
qualities of command, can never assume its outward feat- 
ures — and fail in consequence. How wide and deep and 
infinitely various is human nature ! and how the contem- 
plation of it grows more absorbing as its features disclose 
themselves to view ! " 

The unity of Parkman's life, the concentration of 
all his efforts from first to last on the writing of 



122 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

history, was not reached quite so early or so defin- 
itely as is generally supposed. In 1879, in an im- 
personal way, he described the wisdom of such a 
course ; and the passage is too clearly a reflection of 
his convictions and conduct to escape a personal 
application : 

''There is a universal law of growth and achievement. 
The man who knows himself, understands his own powers 
and aptitudes, forms purposes in accord with them, and 
pursues these purposes steadily, is the man of success. 
He who takes no account of his own nature, makes his 
will the father of his thought, shuts his eyes to unwelcome 
truths, places himself in false positions, and turns from 
the good within his reach to strain after the unattainable, 
is predestined to vexation and failure. Every one has his 
place in the world, and the wise and fortunate find it." 

This passage may be a backward glance at some of 
his early struggles with his own nature. He con- 
fesses in his autobiographical letter that he was for 
a time divided between " the Muse of History . . . 
and her wayward sisters." "We know that poetry 
commanded his attention up to the middle of his 
college course ; and judging by his diaries, fiction 
shared his affections to a certain extent with the 
soberer muse at a much later epoch. The closing 
remark of the above quotation from his journal at St. 
Louis, stands out boldly by its emphasis and breadth 
as to his interest in the study of character. On the 
other hand it is noteworthy that neither letters nor 
diaries contain any expression of joy or interest in 



PREPARATION 123 

the pursuit of historical study. If this study had at 
that time become his sole aim and chief delight, his 
reserve was indeed extraordinary. His diaries are 
far more those of a novelist than a historian, being 
largely made up of sketches of character, manners, 
and customs, dialect, and other contemporaneous and 
realistic matters; but silent as to the deeper and 
broader questions of life that concern history. 
He made " Vassall Morton " say (page 216) : 

''When I was a boy I pleased myself with planning 
that I would study out the springs of human action, and 
trace human emotion up to its sources. It was a boy's 
idea — to fathom the unfathomable, to line and map out 
the shifting clouds and the ever moving winds. De 
Stael speaks the truth — ' man may learn to rule man, 
but only God can comprehend him.'" 

Both Parkman and Motley felt the close relation- 
ship of history and fiction, and each yielded to the 
seduction of the latter in writing a novel early in 
their careers. Parkman wrote "Vassall Morton" 
after having tried his hand successfully as historian 
in " The Conspiracy of Pontiac." He seems to have 
deprecated being taken too seriously, and to have 
eased the launching of a maiden novel by putting on 
the titlepage this verse : 

" Ecrive qui voudra ! Chacun k ce metier 
Peut prendre impunement de I'encre et du papier." 

It may be remarked in passing that each of the 
seventy-four chapters of " Vassall Morton, " as well 



124 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

as those of the first edition of " The Oregon Trail," 
is headed by one or more quotations of poetry. The 
depth of Parkman's early interest in poetry stands 
revealed by the range of reading shown in these 
quotations, and it is equally remarkable that this in- 
terest never reappeared in either his writings or con- 
versation after the publication of " Vassall Morton." 
His only use of verse in after life was a humorous 
one, — composing now and then a parody or quoting 
some stanza absurd for its illiteracy. 

The facts of liis life show very clearly that fiction 
never disturbed the essential unity of his career. 
Probably he wrote "Vassall Morton" chiefly as a 
recreation ; enjoying work on this intermediate level 
of art between the heights of poetry he had relin- 
quished and the plain of history he had accepted. 
Whatever his hopes may have been, they were 
abandoned after the publication and failure of the 
novel in 1856. His subsequent feeling towards the 
book might be taken as a reflection of some degree 
of secret disappointment, and of his strong love of 
dignity and consistency. He disliked to hear it 
mentioned, and never included it among his works. 
His aversion to it may have sprung in part from its 
autobiographic character, although this is well con- 
cealed from all but his intimate friends; certainly 
he need not have been ashamed of the hero as a 
personification of his own leading traits. Then 
again, his dislike may have sprung from a loftier 
feeling : coming as he did to have a legitimate pride 



PREPARATION 125 

in his own extraordinary fidelity to his chosen muse, 
in spite of all discouragements and dangers, he could 
hardly avoid displeasure at the rival that for a time 
led liim a little astray. 

On what kinds of expression did Mr. Parkman 
rely in his study of character? and what was the 
range of his impressions ? His chief reliance seems 
to me to have been the external, matter-of-fact indi- 
cations of words and deeds. While these are often 
a spontaneous and true expression of character, they 
are not always thus to be depended on. Words, 
even when used without the intention of hiding 
thought, are frequently quite inadequate to a sin- 
cere and full expression. Even the more substantial 
testimony of conduct is misleading without a full 
knowledge of the convictions, intentions, feelings, 
and circumstances from which it springs. The spirit, 
the essential character, lives and pursues its appar- 
ently contradictory play behind these masks of words, 
deeds, and material forms as perceived by the aver- 
age eye and mind. The deeper and more essential 
revelations are made in subtile and unconscious 
modes of expression, which are visible only to him 
who possesses highly developed organs of sense and 
mental faculties capable of spiritual insight. He 
who has not an eye sensitive to the subtilities of 
form, line, color, and motion, will not see all the 
unconscious revelations made in face, attitude and 
gesture ; without a fine ear he will not hear the 
significant delicacies of pronunciation, tones, and 



126 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

inflections of voice ; or if he lack the intuitive and 
spiritual cast of mind, he will not duly appreciate 
the significance of the phenomena of the inner life 
that he may perceive. It must be said, however, 
that instinct often leads us to the truth beyond the 
line apparently drawn by the senses ; and Mr. Park- 
man in tliis way may well have felt the nature of 
men in unexpected particulars. His sensitiveness to 
the influence of congenial and uncongenial persons 
lends some weight to this supposition. Tliis im- 
XDressibility, however, indicates an instinctive recog- 
nition of mutually congenial temperaments more 
than any deej) penetration into the secrets of char- 
acter. His reliance chiefly on words and deeds as 
the indication of character was very natural; for 
literature is the mode of expression that he mas- 
tered most thorouglily, and he was continually study- 
ing and writing the records of words and deeds 
of the past, and drawing portraits from these 
revelations. 



CHAPTER VI 

The tragic element in Parkman's life is the proba- 
bility that his sufferings were quite as much the 
result of ignorance as of inherited weakness. He 
himself said that with wiser management his diseases 
might have been cured and outgrown. As a boy he 
was delicate, though not sickly; his inherent forces 
and the activities of youth soon brought him out of 
the doubtful conditions of his childhood, making him 
as a collegian active and enduring beyond the aver- 
age; while the abundance of his vitality and the 
strength of his constitution are fully attested by the 
entire course of his life, in resisting the depression 
of disease and in performing labor. The chief error 
was the not uncommon mistake of regarding exercise 
as the all-sufficient means of securing health. While 
developing his muscles, he failed in the larger duty 
of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the general 
laws of health. 

His physical culture, as we have seen, had as close 
a connection with his personality as any other part 
of his education. His tastes and ruling traits pointed 
in advance to his course and the dangers he would be 
likely to meet. Early in his college life muscular de- 
velopment became his hobby; he desired to equal the 



128 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

Indian in strength, agility, endurance, and skill in 
woodcraft; he also became convinced that a healthy- 
mind could exist only in a healthy body. But in 
pursuing these laudable aims he was exposed to many 
risks. His self-discipline began when he was yet a 
boy at home; he would not permit himself habits 
or thoughts tending in the least to weaken the 
central virtue of manliness. He never could abide 
weakness, either physical, mental, or moral; men, 
women, opinions, emotions, to command his admi- 
ration must show strength and energy. Thus 
the ways of the prudent, complaining, and self- 
indulgent invalid were to him worthy only of con- 
tempt. He himself, going to the other extreme, 
drove his body to exercise with an excessive and 
destructive ambition. He treated his infirmities by 
the fatal method of "crushing them by force," at- 
taining almost a savage's endurance of pain. If the 
strongest mind, bent on attaining health and ignoring 
illness, were able to cure disease by will-power. Park- 
man should have been the healthiest of men. 

Although athletics had not then reached their 
present development in college life, he found suJffi- 
cient means for attaining his ends. "It was in 
Parkman's junior year that a gymnasium was first 
provided by the faculty for the use of the students. 
It was in a wooden building of no great size, and was 
under the superintendence of a pugilist and popular 
teacher of the art of self-defence, but who knew little 
or nothing of scientific training as now understood. 



PREPARATION 129 

It was provided with such apparatus as was then 
common, and the young men, with virtually no one 
to direct or guide them, were allowed to make such 
use as they pleased of the parallel bars, lifting 
machines, and other appliances. Parkman naturally 
availed himself with eagerness of this opportunity of 
increasing his muscular development, now become 
his favorite hobby. He was a constant attendant at 
the gymnasium, took boxing lessons, and emulated 
the foremost in trials of strength and endurance. 
The strain was too great for a constitution not nat- 
urally robust, and in the first term of his senior year 
he was obliged to suspend for a time his college 
studies, and seek relaxation and relief in a voyage to 
Europe."^ Walking was one of his favorite exer- 
cises, and he connected it, as we have seen, with his 
literary purposes. "He was already training himself 
for expeditions into the wilderness, and preparing to 
make an exhaustive study of the aborigines by living 
among them in their native haunts. As a part of 
this preparation he was in the habit, while in college, 
of taking long walks, going always at so rapid a pace 
that it was difficult to keep up with him. This 
manner of walking became habitual to him, and he 
retained it to the last. Long years afterward, when 
crippled by disease and needing two canes to support 
his step, he might often be seen in the streets of 
Boston, walking rapidly for a short distance, then 
suddenly stopping, wheeling around, and propping 

1 Wheelwright. 
9 



130 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

himself against the wall of a house to give a moment's 
repose to his enfeebled knee. Whatever he did, he 
must do it with all his might. He could not saunter, 
he could not creep ; he must move rapidly or stand 
still. "^ On these walks in the countiy he often 
carried his rifle, "Satan." He also did some rowing 
on Fresh Pond. Later, when a student in the Law 
School, he joined a class in riding under the instruc- 
tion of a circus manager. With his chivalric and 
spirited temper he must have taken great pleasure in 
this knightly exercise. "He chose the hardest 
horses, practised riding in every form, with or with- 
out a saddle or stirrups ; could run, leap, jump on a 
charger at full speed, — in short, perform feats 
which only a ' professional ' could execute." ^ In this 
study he probably had in view his Oregon Trail 
trip, which occurred soon after. If our athletic 
games had then been in vogue, his skill, courage, 
coolness and activity would have made him a suc- 
cessful competitor. 

Exercise was of exceptional importance to Park- 
man. His perpetual-motion energy of course could 
not be denied expenditure without repining and 
irritation ; and his love of freedom and activity were 
too strong to be easily reconciled to canes and 
crutches in place of his youthful agility. But the 
matter was much more serious than this ; whenever, 
as he said, confinement became unavoidable, " all the 
irritability of the system centred in the head." As 
1 Wheelwright. ^ Frothingham. 



PREPARATION 131 

this tendency, of all things, had to be most care- 
fully avoided, exercise was almost as necessary as 
food or air; and throughout his life he was faithful 
to this requirement. For many years his lameness 
did not prevent free walking at times, nor horseback 
exercise ; he used also to do what digging and other 
work he could in his garden. Fortunately his arms 
remained serviceable till very near the close of his 
life, so that he could generally enjoy some form of 
exercise with them. Even when confined to his 
wheel-chair he would split wood, hoe in his garden, 
rake, or cut with a sickle the grass along the walks ; 
he even did some carpenter work in making foot 
benches or other objects of utility. During much 
of his latter years he was obliged to use canes or 
crutches, and to carry a stool when working in his 
garden. Disliking eccentricity of all kinds, he was 
much annoyed at having to walk in the streets in 
his peculiar manner ; yet he would not give up exer- 
cise and social intercourse so long as he could enjoy 
them by any means whatever. The pain and the loss 
of freedom caused by his lameness led him for a time 
to consider amputation of the leg; but the relief 
hoped for was too doubtful to justify the operation. 
When rheumatism finally came in the shoulders 
and stopped the last of his out-of-door exercises, 
he accepted massage, practised deep breathing and 
such other movements as could be executed in a 
chair. 

The nature of the ailments that afflicted Parkman 



132 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

and affected so much liis life and character must be 
explained somewhat if we would fully understand 
his struggle for self-mastery. The causes of his early 
illnesses are enveloped in more or less mystery. 
Although in his autobiographic letter he touches 
on some of their relations to his literary labors, he 
nowhere enters into detail ; nor do any of his friends 
seem able to tell much about them. He said that his 
childhood was neither "healthful nor buoyant," but 
with the help of free country life on his grand- 
father's farm, and the vital forces of youth, he 
soon outgrew this condition and acquired a good 
amount of health and strength. In college he was 
remarked for his physical powers and good con- 
dition, — so much so that his friends were surprised 
when, in his junior year, he had to give up his 
studies for a few months and go abroad for his health. 
Nothing very definite is known of the cause of this 
sudden change. Some think it was a trouble with 
his eyes, but there is no reference to this in his 
diaries and the few letters he wrote. It was prob- 
ably as others intimate, with apparently better knowl- 
edge, a trouble of the heart resulting from overstrain 
in the gymnasium at Harvard. He wrote in his 
diary, on leaving Florence, in 1844: 

<' After all I shall not see Grenada, — at least for some 
years; thanks to the cursed injury that brought me to 
Europe; for as I find no great improvement, I judge it 
best to see what a French doctor can do for me, instead 
of running about Spain." 



PREPARATION 133 

Shortly afterward, when among the Alps, as already 
noted, hQ referred to the painful beating of his heart. 
This affection, however, does not seem to have been 
a persistent trouble ; it did not prevent him, even at 
that time, from walking, climbing mountains, and 
ascending cathedral spires as only a vigorous man can 
do; and the malady does not figure among the chronic 
troubles of his after life. There is no subsequent 
mention in his diaries either of disease or medical 
treatment; but a previous writing, a letter to his 
mother from Rome, April 5, 1844, contains this 
passage : 

«I find that though I am very well indeed in other 
respects, there has not been any great change in the 
difficulty that brought me out here. I am not alone in 
this, — there are several Americans in the same scrape, 
and having quite as little success in getting out of it! 
I have resolved to go to Paris to see Dr. Louis, the head 
of his profession in the world, and see if he can do any- 
thing for me. There is some satisfaction in having done 
the utmost, and left no stone unturned. I have been a 
perfect anchorite here, — have given up wine, etc., and 
live at present on forty cents a day for provisions. So 
if I do not thrash the enemy at last, it will not be mv 
fault." ^ 

The first trouble of which we have any definite 
knowledge was the beginning of an affection of the 
eyes. During his first year at the Law School, 
1844-45, he rose very early and studied by candle 
light, often without a fire. In the course of the next 



134 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

winter, when confined to the house by some sickness, 
he for the first time pursued his studies by listening 
to reading. 

The Oregon Trail trip was undertaken partly to 
cure his eyes, partly to study Indian life. As an 
indication of his way of dealing with illness, we have 
the following account of his setting out from Fort 
Laramie : 

*'I had been slightly ill for several weeks, but on the 
third night after reaching Fort Laramie a violent pain 
awoke me, and I found myself attacked by the same 
disorder that occasioned such heavy losses to the army 
on the Kio Grande.- In a day and a half I was reduced 
to extreme weakness, so that I could not walk without 
pain and effort. Having within that time taken six 
grains of opium without the least beneficial effect, and 
having no medical adviser, nor any choice of diet, I 
resolved to throw myself upon Providence for recovery, 
using without regard to the disorder any portion of 
strength that might remain to me. So on the 20th of 
June we set out from Fort Laramie to meet the Whirl- 
wind's village. Though aided by the high bow ' Moun- 
tain Saddle' I could scarcely keep my seat on horseback." ^ 

Once cast off from the last post of civilization, and 
launched in the wilderness among savages, the only 
thing to do was to keep up, and to wear a brave face. 
He speaks again of this experience in his autobio- 
graphic letter: 

1 The Oregon Trail, New Library Edition, p. 145. 



PREPARATION 135 

"Joining the Indians, he followed their wanderings 
for several weeks. To have worn the airs of an invalid 
would certainly have been an indiscretion since in that 
case a horse, a rifle, a pair of pistols, and a red shirt 
might have offered temptations too strong for abori- 
ginal virtue. Yet to hunt buffalo on horseback, over a 
broken country, when without the stimulant of the chase 
he could scarcely sit upright in the saddle, was not 
strictly necessary for maintaining the requisite pres- 
tige. The sport, however, was good, and the faith un- 
doubting, that to tame the devil it is best to take him 
by the horns." 

The chief trial on this trip was the lack of digestible 
food. He became worn to a skeleton, was often 
faint and dizzy, with lack of nouHshment, having to 
be helped into the saddle ; and his mind at times lost 
its clearness. The prolonged and excessive strain of 
this journey under these conditions permanently 
impaired his digestion, thus reducing his powers to 
resist the development of disease. In this way the 
Oregon trip was the immediate cause of his infirmi- 
ties, though some of them may have had their source 
in heredity. Suffering as he did from troubles of 
digestion, he was unable to sleep during the night ; 
when at dawn he dozed off, exhausted, his guide had 
to call him to depart. Tlius began the insomnia that 
wearied him persistently all the rest of his days. 
From that time onward, during long periods of time, 
he would get but two or three hours of sleep out of 
the twenty-four; he often had less than this, or even 



136 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

none, and when four or five hours of unconsciousness 
came, he enjoyed an unusual blessing. His confi- 
dence in nature made him doubtful of phj^sicians and 
drugs, and gave him most hojDe in the natural powers 
of the body. Insomnia so prolonged and persistent 
was one of the greatest of his physical trials ; it in- 
deed seemed that insanity must at last result from 
this exhausting and irritating form of suffering. 

Inflammation and weakness of the eyes naturally 
increased with the decline of his general health on 
the Oregon trip. The disease never afterwards left 
him, though it fluctuated often, and diminished 
somewhat as he grew older. Still another physical 
misfortune was his to bear: rheumatic gout with 
effusion in one of the knees. Finally, the overstrain 
of his early life was most regrettable in helping to 
develop some inherited tendency to disorders of the 
brain and nervous system. His general troubles 
were believed by the doctors to "come from an 
abnormal state or partial paralysis of certain arteries 
of the brain."! 

The Oregon Trail trip thus cost Parkman his 
health for life ; but so predominant was his ambition, 
so much did he value his Indian studies, and so little 
compassion had he for his physical being, that he 
never regretted this costly but fruitful experience. 
From that time onward he was never free from ill- 
ness of some sort. One or another of his maladies 
was always undermining his forces ; making his per- 
1 Letter to Abbe' H. K. Casgrain, Jan. 26, 1872. 



PREPARATION^ 137 

sistent industry and fortitude one of the most impres- 
sive examples of human achievement and endurance. 
He used to call his infirmities "the enemy," with a 
quiet tone of humor and patience; the phrase cov- 
ered many a solitary struggle of untold heroism. 

The history of his health, like that of his life, 
offers few incidents of note. He passed through at 
least four severe crises of pain and disability within 
a period of twenty years. The extent of his suffer- 
ings is nowhere revealed, only hinted at in writing; 
he is remembered, however, by an intimate friend or 
two to have said that death would often have been a 
welcome end of his trials. Generally he passed acute 
attacks either in turning his thoughts and conversa- 
tion to light and jocose topics, or in silent and patient 
endurance. Once, when his physician, during a bad 
attack, encouraged him by saying that he had a strong 
constitution, Parkman replied quaintly, "I'm afraid 
I have." There is nothing to tell of these crises 
beyond the patience and fortitude with which he 
endured them. Sometimes, however, he felt so 
strongly that he had had more than his share of suf- 
fering, that a fresh attack would cause him to explode 
in a few very forcible expressions; then his quiet 
patience soon regained the mastery. 

Parkman's pathological conditions and their rela- 
tions to his work and his experience were altogether 
remarkable, and I regret not being able to go deeper 
into the many questions they open. His mysterious 
nervous disorder, his physical infirmities, his irre- 



138 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

pressible mental energy, his remarkable powers of 
will and of mind contending for self-mastery and 
for the accomplishment of a vast amount of labor, — 
such a life and character offered to both physiologist 
and psychologist a study of exceptional complexity 
and interest. 



^art II 

PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 



CHAPTER VII 

Despite his reserve, Parkman's individuality 
stands forth most impressively in his work. He 
should have been a knight of the Round Table ; few 
men would have surpassed him in skill at arms, in 
courage, in doughty deeds, in gallant courtesy, in 
fidelity in friendship and service, or in winning 
favors from fair women. His chivalrous spirit, his 
martial bearing when on horseback, even his per- 
son seem to be embodied in the finest equestrian 
statue in Venice, that of Condottiere Colleoni. Park- 
man was much attracted to this work; when in 
Venice he often went to see it, and he had photo- 
graphs of it on the walls of his study. He may have 
felt a certain degree of spiritual kinship with this 
celebrated soldier, and liked in fancy to return to 
the times when his own manly nature would have 
found free exercise in chivalrous accomplishments 
and martial achievements. His chivalrous turn of 
mind was shown in his school days, when he para- 



140 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARIvMAN 

phrased parts of the -<iEneid and turned into verse the 
tournament scene in "Ivanhoe." But, born in the 
nineteenth century, he had to content himself with 
choosing for a literary theme the most adventurous 
epoch of American history, and living by his imagi- 
native sympathy in those experiences. 

In considering Parkman as an historian I shall 
not depart from the principal aim of this memoir, 
which is to portray his personality. We shall there- 
fore consider his books not as histories or literature, 
but rather as a mirror reflecting the author's own 
character. Nothing about him was more interesting 
and important than his intimate relations with his 
work. He enjoyed the rare blessing of harmony 
between his theme, his culture, his life, and his 
individuality. Loving his subject as he did, he 
truly lived in the writing of his books. His methods 
of working under immense disabilities were so char- 
acteristic of the man that the lesson of his persever- 
ance and success cannot be too widely known. "We 
shall do well to glance once more at his personal 
qualities, his education, his life, and his labors, the 
better to get a reflection of the man in his artistic 
products. 

We have seen that from the start he directed his 
education so as to cover all needs and topics con- 
nected with his theme ; as he said, writing of himself 
in the third person, he " entered upon a training well 
fitted to serve his purpose, slighted all college studies 
which could not promote it, and pursued with avidity 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 141 

such as had a bearing upon it however remote. His 
reliance, however, was less on books than on such 
personal experience as should in some sense identify 
him with his theme." ^ 

Here we touch the most influential force in his 
preparation and method, — the very law of gravita- 
tion of his system. He early saw and obeyed the 
principle that the artist must seek the closest sym- 
pathy with his subject by knowledge, skill, and feel- 
ing. And he set out at once to attain this sympathy, 
both ideal and utilitarian, by two lines of effort — (1) 
by personal experience and observation of the ele- 
ments of his subject ; (2) by an exhaustive examina- 
tion of documents. 

1. His personal experiences, despite the fact that 
he had to do with times long past, brought him in 
contact with many objective elements of his theme. 
As we have seen, he began even as a child to become 
familiar with nature, and as years rolled on he in- 
creased this intimacy by some study of the natural 
sciences, by much observation in the pursuit of his 
recreations in the woods, and by travel, which culti- 
vated his eye for the larger and more pictorial aspects 
of nature. 

He visited all the important localities connected 
with his narratives, and this study of historic scenes 
did something more than fit him for describing mili- 
tary movements; it enabled him to give his work its 
remarkable realism. Genuine artist that he was, he 

1 Autobiography, pp. 351-352. 



142 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

first seized the large features of a scene, its atmos- 
phere, its light, thus getting his backgrounds; then 
added the details, of soil and rocks, trees and flowers, 
birds and beasts peculiar to the region. His love of 
the vivid, the strong, the effective, was always guided 
by the desire of accurate knowledge. He must have 
had a remarkable sureness of glance, of judgment in 
selection, and of memory; for a few meagre notes 
sufficed in subsequent years to recall the main 
features and details of scenes so accurately that they 
appear in his volumes as if drawn fresh from life. 
Knowing that his imagination depended on facts for 
its impetus, he gave free play to his tastes in study- 
ing his theme on its own ground, delighting in expe- 
riencing, as far as possible, the same hardships and 
adventures that were met by the discoverers, the war 
parties, the fur traders, and the missionaries of early 
times. The frontiersman interested him in his jour- 
neys about the wilds of New England and the West ; 
the hardy pioneer in his log cabin in the stump- 
dotted field surrounded by the forest, made him 
realize the strenuous and pathetic struggle of the 
family there for a livelihood; and he had but to 
imagine Indians lurking under the trees to feel all 
the horrors of French and Indian massacres. 

Unquestionably, the most important element of his 
objective study and experience was his observation of 
Indian life and character. Without an intimate 
knowledge of the red man he would have failed in 
some of the principal figures of his compositions. 



PARFIvlAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 143 

His first contact with the Indian is mentioned in his 
"Half Century." In 1835 or 1836 a party of chiefs 
and warriors of the Sacs and Foxes visited Boston, 
and, as he says, " danced a war-dance on the Common 
in full costume, to the delight of the boy spectators, 
of whom I was one." ^ Soon after this his interest was 
more deeply stirred by reading Cooper; as early as 
1841 he ]]ad become so identified with the novelist's 
red heroes that he dreamed of them, talked of them 
more than of anything else, emulated them in wood- 
craft when on his walks and his longer vacation jour- 
neys, often in the full flow of his enthusiasm whooping 
and jumping about and imitating the calls of wild 
animals. In his diary of that year occurs this first 
record of a working interest in the subject : 

" Mr. Williams offered me the use of the notebook of 
his journies of last year in which he has preserved a con- 
siderable number of Indian legends taken from the lips of 
Anantz, who is well versed in the traditions of his tribe. 
I shall certainly avail myself of his offer." 

On his vacation trip of 1842, while at supper in a 
tavern in Cambridge, Vermont, an old farmer seems 
to have had an intuition of his propensities : 

*'He turned to me and asked if I was not an Indian! 
I assured him that I was not, on which he coolly shook his 
head and said that he made it a principle never to contra- 
dict any man. He did not consider it any disgrace, for 
his part, to be an Indian; he had known Indians well 

1 Half Century, vol. i. p. 333. 



144 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKM'AN 

edicated, afore now. He was very far from /neaning to 
offend. He proved, after all, a fine old fellow ; liis sins 
being all of ignorance. Far from being offended, I favored 
his belief, for the joke's sake." 

Again, in 1844, we find him entertaining his land- 
lord at an Italian inn with tales of Indian life ; and 
one of his friends of those days says : " His tales of 
border life, wampum, scalps, and birch-bark were 
unsurpassed by anything in Cooper." ^ 

Once enlisted in the study, he pushed it on with 
his usual energy. He visited the remnants of tribes 
still lingering on the borders of civilization in New 
England, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and 
Wisconsin; so that in 1845 he could write to a cor- 
respondent that, having read "almost all the works 
on the Indians, from Lafitau and the Jesuits down to 
the autobiography of Blackhawk," he had arrived at 
the conclusion "that their character will always 
remain more or less of a mystery to one who does not 
add practical observations to his closet studies. In 
fact, I am more than half resolved to devote a few 
months to visiting the distant tribes." 

This resolution he carried into effect the next year, 
in his Oregon Trail journey. He was well prepared, 
both physically and mentally, for such an undertak- 
ing. A good shot with the rifle, and an accomplished 
horseman, fond of the experiences, adventures, and 
hardships of a wild life, he was ready even to follow 
the Indian on the war path. Moreover, his extensive 

1 Horatio J. Perry's Reminiscences. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 145 

reading, and observation of semi-civilized tribes, had 
given him what knowledge was then attainable, by 
which to appreciate what he should see. The wide 
scope of his interests is revealed in this passage : 

"I had come into the country almost exclusively with 
a view of observing the Indian character. Having from 
childhood felt a curiosity on this subject, and having failed 
completely to gratify it by reading, I resolved to have re- 
course to observation. I wished to satisfy myself with 
regard to the position of the Indians among the races of 
men; the vices and the virtues that have sprung from their 
innate character and from their modes of life, their govern- 
ment, their superstitions and their domestic situation. 
To accomplish my purpose it was necessary to live in the 
midst of a village, and make myself an inmate of one of 
their lodges." ^ 

The curiosity to which he alludes was but a small 
part of his motives in making this perilous journey; 
he had his life work chiefly in view, and felt that 
nothing short of this intimate objective knowledge 
could identify him with his theme. He secured by 
this course a unique position among American histo- 
rians, for the disappearance or changed condition of 
these tribes now makes it impossible for any one to 
enjoy the advantages he seized with such wisdom. 

2. The more one knows of Parkman's character 
the more interesting, as reflections of his strong per- 
sonality, do his labors and productions become. His 
study of documents and books impresses one at once 

^ The Oregon Trail, p. 143. 
10 



146 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

with an idea of a just, thorough, and honest mind. 
From the time when he chose as his subject the 
"Old French War," he naturally gave much of his 
attention to history; and soon secured good standing 
in this department in Harvard. Then, as told us in 
his autobiographic letter, while attending the law 
school he "entered in earnest" on a course of general 
history. Although his labors had regard to a small 
fraction of the human race and a part of the earth of 
little value at that time, he very justly looked upon 
his theme as important, and prepared himself with 
characteristic thoroughness. 

His originality and independence were evident in 
his college days, when he broke from the usual 
methods of historical work. In those times the dis- 
course of the professor stood between the subject and 
the students ; they were content to accept a second, 
or even third dilution of the truth. But Parkman 
soon started out on an independent course through 
the wilderness of American history, having his own 
ideas as to equipment, route, and destination, thus 
becoming one of the earliest pioneers in the modern 
scientific method of historical work — the study of 
comparative history, the search for original sources, 
and the continual comparison of history with con- 
temporary life and character. Even in his earliest 
studies he rigorously demanded information at first 
hand. In a general way, as the various streams of 
his narrative began their course in England, France, 
or Spain, he traced them to their beginnings as he 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 147 

would a river in the wilderness; he familiarized him- 
self with their historj^ especially with that of France 
under Louis XIV., as far as the scholarship of that 
day made it possible, often mastering details that 
were beyond the needs of his special theme. Then 
he soon drew upon these sources in more specific 
ways. We have already seen how carefully he 
studied the written history and ethnology of the 
North American Indians, gathering, besides, what- 
ever could be learned of them by personal observa- 
tion. He also ran through all the family papers he 
could find in New England, the West, and in Canada. 
His course of study in these lines is nowhere re- 
corded; but we can see from his works that it must 
have included many of the deeper questions of civili- 
zation, of national policies, of racial peculiarities, 
of types of character, and of religious aims and 
organizations. 

Romanism, as the central force in Canadian history, 
was soon recognized by Parkman as a subject of 
capital importance. As early as 1843 he saw that 
his literary undertaking "required clear impressions 
of monastic life, and of Roman Catholic ecclesiasti- 
cism in general." And he continued throughout his 
life to watch with great interest the effects of this 
religion on personal and national character. Born 
and bred a Unitarian, but early escaping from the 
broad limitations of even this belief, he was quite in- 
different to sectarian distinctions; or, rather, he was 
antagonistic to religions of all kinds in proportion to 



148 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

their exaltation of doctrine and ritual above practical 
morality and the growth of character. The Roman 
Catholic Church repelled him by her moral code, her 
temporal and ecclesiastical ambition, her superstitions 
and supernaturalism, and her denial of freedom in 
mental growth. There can be no doubt that his long 
study of this mighty system had an influence over his 
own development. His most fundamental traits 
were absolutely opposed to many of the aims and 
methods of the church, though his love of truth and 
fair play never allowed him to ignore what was 
admirable in the character or conduct of her fol- 
lowers. He would have disliked with equal force 
any other church possessing equal power for enforc- 
ing similar aims ; he had quite as much aversion for 
many features of Puritanism, from which he sprang ; 
and he said that had he been writing the history of 
New England, he would have criticised the Puritans 
as severely as he did the Catholic Church in Canada. 
Some interesting glimpses of his studies in this 
field are given in the diaries of his journey through 
Sicily and Italy, where he availed himself of every 
opportunity to visit churches, monasteries, and other 
religious institutions. He felt the need of under- 
standing not the theological abstractions, but the 
principles and aims of Romanism in directing a civili- 
zation; the spirit and methods of education and 
monastic life by which she moulds the character of 
her followers; the kind of men that she turns out 
from her institutions. These questions were among 



PAROIAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 149 

the most important interests of his first journey to 
Europe; without this knowledge he would have 
lacked the key to many political events, and to the 
character and conduct of many of the most important 
personages in Canadian history. In this study he 
showed a keenness of perception and an impartiality 
of judgment very uncommon in a youth of twenty 
possessing strong adverse convictions. 

At Messina he wrote this generous recognition of 
the good that may be derived from the church's 
artistic ritual: 

^'The church of the Benedictines is the noblest edifice 
I have seen. This and others not unlike it have im^ 
pressed me with new ideas of the Catholic religion. Not 
exactly, for I reverenced it before as the religion of gen. 
erations of brave and great men, — but now, I honor it 
for itself. They are mistaken who sneer at its ceremonies 
as a mere mechanical farce ; they have a powerful and 
salutary effect on the mind. Those who have witnessed 
the services in the Benedictine church, and deny what I 
say, must either be singularly stupid and insensible by 
nature or rendered so by prejudice." 

Another religious ceremony at Palermo served at 
least the purpose of stimulating the growth of his 
imagination : 

''The next day I went to the Capuchin convent, where 
the holy fathers keep many thousand mummies, in vaulted 
apartments under ground. I was so edified by the in- 
teresting spectacle, that I bought a mass for fifty cents 
and appointed four o'clock the next morning to hear it 



150 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

performed iu the sepulclires. Giuseppe waked me and we 
sallied forth. Though it wanted more than two hours 
of daylight, many people were. abroad. Fires were burn- 
ing outside the cafes and confectioners', with ragamuffins 
aniJiUes de joie grouped around them for the sake of the 
warmth. The porter made his appearance at the gate of 
the convent, and conducted us in, where we found five or 
six of the fathers assembled with lamps awaiting the 
coming of the prior. When all was ready we descended 
into the tombs. The mummies, each from his niche in 
the wall, grinned at us diabolically as we passed along. 
Several large cats, kept there for the benefit of the rats, 
stared at us with their green eyes, and then tramped off. 
When we got to the little chapel, the prior put off his 
coarse Capuchin dress, and arrayed himself in white 
robes — the curtain was drawn aside from the image of 
the Virgin behind the altar, the lamps lighted, and the 
mass i^erformed. When all was over one of the fathers 
lighted a torch to show the catacombs by its light. Coffins 
piled up below, — men shrunk to a mere nothing, but 
clothed as they used to be above ground, all ranged along 
the wall on either hand, — a row of skulls under the cor- 
nices — this made up the spectacle, which was rather 
disgusting. There were one or two children, just dead, 
and a few men, flung down in a corner, waiting for the 
drying-up process." 

Here is the account of a more pleasing experience 
in a convent near the same city : 

'^ We turned off to the left, and after a long ride, came 
to the monastery of San Martino, in a wild and sublime 
situation among mountains. The Benedictines here are 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 151 

all of noble blood. Everything is on a scale of magnifi- 
cence and luxury, pictures, fountains, the church, the 
chapels, the library, the interminable galleries of the 
enormous building. There are no tawdry ornaments; 
everything is in good taste; but for ascetic privations 
and mortification of the flesh, look elsewhere than at 
San Martino. The fathers were at the table. I was 
served with a dinner of lampreys and other delicacies, 
which a prince might have envied. There is a preserve 
of wild game, a formidable establishment of cooks and 
scullions, a beautiful conversazione, and billiard rooms, 
for the diversion of the pious devotees. In a palace-like 
hall, below the surface of the ground, sustained by col- 
umns and arches of the rich marbles of Sicily, and lighted 
from above, is a noble statue of San Martino. He is a 
young soldier on horseback, with as little savor of the 
saint about him as any of his votaries in this luxurious 
monastery." 

In Rome he continued his observations, visited 
various religious institutions, got himself presented 
to the Pope, and attended all the ceremonies of Holy 
Week. He wrote of the last: "These ceremonies of 
Holy Week, about which so much is said, would not 
be worth seeing, were it not for the crowd of people 
they draw together." Outside of his reading and 
continual observation of the effects of Romanism on 
character and conduct, his most intimate study of the 
system was made while spending some days in a Pas- 
sionist convent in Rome, an account of which was 
published in " Harper's Magazine " for August, 1890. 
In it he refers to the efforts made by the Jesuits and 



152 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAX 

others to convert him. One is struck by his fearless- 
ness, in voluntarily facing their heaviest guns, and 
even putting himself into their hands for the sake of 
study. He wrote this frank acknowledgment of the 
learning that was brought to bear on his heresy: 

"It is as startling to a 'son of Harvard' to see the 
astounding learning of these Jesuit Fathers, and the ap- 
palling readiness and rapidity with which they pour forth 
their interminable streams of argument, as it would be to 
a Yankee parson to witness his whole congregation, with 
church, pulpit and all, shut up within one of the great 
columns which support the dome of St. Peter's — a thing 
which might assuredly be done." 

He continued his study and observation of Roman- 
ism to the last, with increasing aversion for many of 
its effects on personal and national character. While 
in camp in Canada, in 1886, we read together Paul 
Bert's translation of Gury's Moral Theology, in 
which the wonderful moral code of the church is set 
forth as a practical handbook and guide for con- 
fessors. I see him now get up from his stool and 
stride about, giving vent in the most forcible terms 
to his wrath at such an organized system of pardon- 
ing everything. Yet no one was more ready in 
acknowledging the worth of Catholic men and 
women, wherever they showed themselves as faithful 
followers of the larger Christian principles of that 
religion, or as strong enough in native manliness and 
virtue to resist its demoralizing ecclesiastical influ- 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 153 

ences. His own moral earnestness and deep interest 
in all that helps to elevate mankind forbade him to 
ignore the good side of Romanism or to treat it in a 
flippant way. The result is that while some Roman 
Catholic writers complain of his severe criticisms and 
exposures, others admit his fairness. And certainly 
in view of his knowledge of the system, and of his 
deep-seated temperamental antipathy to much of it, 
he shows in his writings a remarkable degree of 
moderation and self-control. 

His study of documents presents the further inter- 
est of bringing to light a part of his long moral dis- 
cipline and many evidences of the power of his 
elemental will. Having "no natural inclinations" 
for historical research, he found it " abundantly irk- 
some and laborious." His instincts pointed to free- 
dom and activity out of doors, — a kind of life needed 
by him on account of his delicate health. More- 
over, being financially independent, he might have 
excused himself for enjoying an existence of idle 
ease, and also for shirking extreme demands for 
accuracy, because of the almost insurmountable 
obstacles to research presented by his weakness of 
eyes and brain. There was yet another invitation to 
superficiality in his strong imagination and his great 
love of the picturesque. It would have been easy 
for him to give rein to his fancy, and to paint most 
effective pictures out of little knowledge. But his 
ambition, energy, and sincerity were more than suffi- 
cient against any such temptations ; in fact, none of 



154 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

these circumstances tempted him in the least. His 
highest satisfaction was in doing work well ; he lived 
for this end. Yet the success he attained sprang 
from something deeper than the writer's ambition; 
— his persistent industry was a necessity to his in- 
born energy and force of will, while his scholarship 
and accuracy were the natural result of deep 
sincerity. 

He developed very early, as we have said, the his- 
torian's passion and skill for getting at original docu- 
ments. It is told of him that when he was beginning 
his investigations for the writing of "Pontiac," he 
went to a relative to borrow some money for pur- 
chasing a MS. he needed, — his father being at the 
time in Europe. This lady refused to gratify what 
she called the whim of a boy; but he said that he 
should get it elsewhere, and so he did, and thus 
began his collection of historical documents. When 
possible he penetrated into the monasteries of Can- 
ada for a sight of their hidden records, or obtained 
copies of documents referring to his subjects. In 
his Preface to the first edition of " Pontiac " he gives 
a very short statement of his long labors, an account 
that applies in a general way to his researches for 
the entire series of volumes: 

'" The most troublesome part of the task was the col- 
lection of the necessary documents. These consisted of 
letters, journals, reports, and despatches, scattered among 
numerous public offices and private families in Europe 
and America. Contemporary newspapers, magazines, and 



PAROIAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 155 

pamphlets have also been examined, and careful search 
made for every book which, directly or indirectly, might 
throw light upon the subject. I have visited the sites of 
all the principal events recorded in the narrative, and 
gathered such local traditions as seemed worthy of 
confidence." 

Parkman's personal address was not an insignifi- 
cant part of his equipment. In spite of his reserve, 
his frankness and good breeding inspired confidence 
and won friendly assistance in quarters not easy of 
access ; while his knowledge of men was often most 
serviceable, even indispensable, in ranging the wide 
field of his investigations. He fitted himself and his 
correspondence to the personal temperament and the 
national customs of the people with whom he had 
dealings. His letters to Frenchmen were written in 
excellent French, and in the polite forms usual with 
that people. In all of them there is found a courteous 
and generous recognition of services rendered, and a 
readiness to reciprocate favors. Thus he was gen- 
erally very successful in approaching both public and 
private sources of information on both continents. It 
is unfortunate that the few letters he wrote refer so 
seldom to topics of general interest; they deal al- 
most exclusively with the details of the researches 
he directed; nevertheless, they contain some pas- 
sages sufficiently interesting and characteristic for 
reproduction. 

The only serious obstacle met with in his researches 
was the refusal of M. Pierre Margry, director of the 



156 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

Archives of the Marine and Colonies at Paris, to let 
him use a large collection of documents concerning 
La Salle and other explorers of the West. This 
affair is related in the prefaces to "La Salle," at least 
as far as Parkman cared to publish it. His account 
is extremely charitable; for experts censured M. 
Margry very severely for regarding as private prop- 
erty a collection of papers obtained largely from the 
documents of which he was the official keeper ; and 
also for the mercenary and "intractable" spirit with 
which he kept the truth under lock and key. Park- 
man was obliged to publish his volume on La Salle 
without a sight of these papers, and knowing that he 
would probably have to rewrite portions of the book. 
Yet his tact and patience never failed him through 
years of effort to see those documents, which he at 
last got published actually for M. Margry's profit by 
means of an appropriation from Congress. Parkman 
in a letter ^ thus refers to his efforts in this matter : 

''Petitions were sent in [to Congress] from the princi- 
pal historical societies east and west, from professors of 
Harvard College, and other persons of literary prominence 
to whom I explained the nature of the proposed publica- 
tion. During the winter I wrote some forty letters to 
congressmen and others and made personal applications to 
various persons whose influence would have weight." 

When this effort had reached a successful issue, 
after so much trouble that should never have arisen, 

1 To Mr. Harrise. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 157 

he was capable of writing the following letter to M. 
Margry, characteristically making light of his own 
services : 

"MoN Cher Ami, — Enfin nous avons de quoi nous 
feliciter. La galere commence k vaguer. Votre derniere 
lettre (sans date, suivant votre blamable habitude) m'a 
rejoui le cceur. Je vous crie grace de vos taquineries; 
vous m'en avez fait de belles. N'importe; soyez gai et 
gaillard ; riez, plaisantez, quand vos documents seront 
publies nous aurons, vous et moi, de quoi nous rejouir en- 
semble. Cependant, dcoutez le cerf agile/ qui vous parle 
du fond de ses forets. Courage, dit-il, par ce collier je 
chasse de la riviere les canots ennemis qui pourraient 
troubler la navigation; je donne une grande bonace au lac 
qu'il faut traverser, j'apaise les vents et je tempera la 
colere des eaux; je dissipe tons les nuages; je vous net- 
toie les oreilles afin que vous entendiez la voix de ma 
sagesse; je rends les chemins unis pour vous faire courir 
heureusement a la fin de votre grande entreprise." ^ 

As another example of his keenness of scent and 
perseverance in hunting down historical materials, 

1 Margry's name for Parkman, on account of his rapid step. 

2 " Dear Friend, — At last -we may congratulate ourselves. Our 
troubles begin to take wing. Your last letter (without date, accord- 
ing to your unfortunate custom) did my heart good. Enough of 
your teasing ! You have given it to me heavy. But no matter ; 
make merry as you like, laugh and joke, — when your documents 
are published we shall have good reason to rejoice together. And 
yet, listen to the agile deer, who speaks to you from the depths of 
his forest. Courage, he says, by this necklace, I drive from the 
river the enemy's canoes, which might interfere with navigation ; 
I calm the lake that is to be crossed, I quiet the winds and soothe 
the anger of the waters ; I blow away all clouds ; I clear your ears 



158 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

read this account of his discovering Montcahn's 
letters to Bourlamaque : 

" Many years ago I was informed that an important 
collection of autograph letters of the Marquis de Mont- 
calm was in the possession of a person in Paris who 
wished to sell them, but I was unable to find the slightest 
clue to the person in question. At length I was told that 
the papers were sold, and that the purchaser was said to 
be an Englishman. Beyond this I could learn nothing. 
The descendants of the Marquis de Montcalm had heard 
of the existence of the papers, but were totally ignorant 
into what hands they had passed. As the late Sir Thomas 
Philipps was the greatest collector of manuscripts in Eng- 
land, I examined the catalogue of his vast collection, but 
made no discovery. It was about fifteen years since I had 
heard of the existence of the papers, and all my attempts 
to view them had completely failed, when a gentleman 
connected with the British Museum kindly offered his aid 
in making the inquiry, and, in a few months, sent me the 
welcome announcement that the custodian of Sir Thomas 
Philipps's collection had informed him that the Montcalm 
letters were in his keeping, having been purchased by Sir 
Thomas, but not catalogued. I at once went to Chelten- 
ham, where this wonderful collection was preserved, and 
obtained a copy of all the Montcalm letters. They proved 
to be written to Bourlamaque, one of his chief ofiicers, and 
are doubly interesting because they were meant for no eye 
but his, and often contain the injunction, brulez cette 
lettre, or hridez toutes mes lettres, which, fortunately for 
us, Bourlamaque did not do. The handwriting of Mont- 

that you may hear the voice of my wisdom ; I smooth the roads 
that you may run easily to the end of your great enterprise." 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 159 

calm is never very clear, and these letters being hastily 
written, are unusually difficult examples of it. The copy- 
ist, though he took great pains, was now and then at a 
loss to decipher some intricate passage; yet it is be- 
lieved that every essential part has been successfully 
transcribed." 

Imagination, judgment, sincerity, industry, scholar- 
ship, and the faculty of identification with his pur- 
suits were thus happily united in Parkman, — partly 
by the constitution of his temperament, and partly by 
his distinct purpose to balance the studies of the 
closet by observation and experience. He managed 
to see and feel nearly everything he had to describe. 
For much of his work related to primitive and un- 
changed elements, — the forest, the main features of 
historic scenes, the experiences of woodcraft, the 
border life of pioneers, the fundamental elements of 
human nature, the life and character of the Indian 
then still untamed. Gathering together these still 
present objective remnants of the past, Parkman, 
with his imagination and his constructive skill, com- 
posed historical pictures of extraordinary vividness 
and realism. He identified himself with his theme 
so completely that he was possessed by the one desire 
to tell his story. To this aim he consecrated his 
time, strength, and fortune. And this purpose, 
with some help, it is true, from his philosophy of 
historical writing, was so absorbing that it almost 
buried his own personality in his pages; he rarely 
showed any consciousness of his own thoughts, feel- 



160 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

ings, experiences or philosophy; he gave the story, 
and that only. 

In looking at the great mass of manuscript he col- 
lected and digested, one partially realizes by the 
material evidence of mere bulk how much he did for 
the sake of thoroughness, but fully only when one 
remembers the weakness of eyes and brain that in- 
creased his labors tenfold. In the preface to " A Half 
Century of Conflict," he thus referred to his collec- 
tion at the close of his labors : 

"The manuscript material, collected for the prepara- 
tion of the series now complete, forms about seventy 
volumes, most of them folios. These have been given by 
me from time to time to the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, in whose library they now are, open to the ex- 
amination of those interested in the subjects of which 
they treat. The collection was begun forty-five years 
ago, and its formation has been exceedingly slow, having 
been retarded by difficulties which seemed insurmount- 
able, and for years were so in fact. Hence the completion 
of the series has required twice the time that would have 
sufficed under less unfavorable conditions." 

He spoke in detail in other prefaces of the materials 
used in the preparation of each volume. 

A collection standing for so much money and labor 
was, naturally, to him an object worthy of great care. 
Moreover, it was his witness that he had fairly and 
thoroughly dealt with all the evidence then attain- 
able. In the interest of historical truth, and in the 
consciousness of a duty well done, he wished his 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 161 

papers to be kept together in a place of safety that 
should be easily accessible to students. They were 
accordingly given to the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, of Boston.^ 

1 See the Society's Transactions, 2nd series, I. 360-362 ; III. 152, 
153; VI. 165, 391, 392; Vn. 348, 349; VIII. 171. 



11 



CHAPTER VIII 

The history of literature can hardly show another 
writer who made his work so predominant an interest 
throughout his life, who overcame so many serious 
obstacles, or who worked with so much apparent 
independence of hindering physical conditions. One 
naturally asks, How did Parkman manage, with poor 
sight, to conduct his researches ? How did he make 
his notes ? How did he write or dictate his books ? 
What kind of assistance did he find it possible to 
employ? Then there is the larger interest of his 
intellectual processes. What were his methods of 
planning and constructing his books ? What was his 
philosophy of writing history ? 

The mechanical means by which he overcame the 
difficulties besetting all writers having defective 
vision are easily explained; his means of economiz- 
ing and directing the precarious and abnormal ener- 
gies of his brain are not so readily stated, though 
they will be considered in treating of his daily life 
and social habits. His intellectual steps and pro- 
cesses of composition are still less within our grasp, 
for he left very meagre records of them. 

Parkman needed all his money, ability, and will- 
power to face the difficulties of his career. His 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 163 

diseases gave liim a mucli deeper trial than physical 
suffering; they continually threatened him with 
an ineffectual life, and a denial of his innermost 
longings. No one can estimate the power he must 
have lost in the mere strain of enduring imperfect 
digestion, insomnia, rheumatism, arthritis, nervous 
troubles. These, with pains in the head, were one 
or the other, and often all together, continually sap- 
ping his force. He never saw a perfectly well day 
during his entire literary career. Still less can we 
appreciate how much power was lost by the innumer- 
able interruptions, the frittering away of force in 
continually starting and stopping his intellectual 
machinery, and by the self-control needed for the 
preservation of his mental balance. To these diffi- 
culties must be added some specific disorders that of 
all things were the most discouraging to a historian, 
— weakness of sight and frequent incapacity for con- 
secutive and prolonged thought. 

While never losing either sight or sanity, he used 
his eyes and his brain always with the understanding 
that any excess of labor or pleasure would lead to 
increased suffering and possibly to total disability. 
His autobiographic letter states in simple terms an 
experience not matched by any other that I know in 
literature : 

"During the past eighteen years (1847-1865), the 
state of his health has exacted throughout an extreme 
caution in regard to mental application, reducing it at 
best within narrow and precarious limits, and often pre- 



164 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

eluding it. Indeed, for two periods, each of several years, 
any attempt at bookish occupation would have been 
merely suicidal. A condition of sight arising from kin- 
dred sources has also retarded the work, since it has never 
permitted reading or writing continuously for much more 
than five minutes, and often has not permitted them at 
all." 

He could not endure even ordinarily rapid reading, 
and at his best could work only two hours a day, 
with many short periods of repose. About ten years 
of his life were thus lost from work, not counting 
short interruptions of days, weeks, and months. 
Writing of this matter in 1886 he said: 

''Taking the last forty years as a whole, the capacity 
of literary work which during that time has fallen to my 
share has, I am confident, been considerably less than 
a fourth part of what it would have been under normal 
conditions." 

In the face of all these difficulties he took up a 
labor of exceptional magnitude, one that he estimated 
at the outset would require, with good health, about 
twenty years. Moreover, he resolved that nothing 
should be an excuse for stopping short of the nearest 
possible approach to finality in research, or in exact- 
ness and fulness of statement. The task took him 
fifty years instead of twenty, and the thoroughness 
and extent of his work under such conditions make 
his achievement certainly one of the wonders of 
literature. 



PAEKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 165 

In trying to see the conditions that made this labor 
possible, we find one mystery among some very plain 
facts of character and culture. We have already 
had a hint of the helpful harmony that existed 
between his theme and his temperament; we have 
seen how good sense, pecuniary independence, and 
breadth of view as to the historian's duties presided 
over his education and guided his experience; how 
comparative freedom from family cares and distrac- 
tions favored the concentration of his strength upon 
one end ; how independent means, an elemental force 
of will, a happy balance between the driving power 
of impetuous energy and courage, and the regulating 
power of caution and method, — how all these, com- 
bined with great self-knowledge, enabled him to pur- 
sue his course close along the very verge of disaster. 

Yet all these favorable traits and circumstances 
would have been unavailing had his physical infirmi- 
ties produced their usual effects on the nervous 
system and the brain. For the conditions of the 
physical organism cannot be long ignored, no matter 
what amount of moral force may drive it for a time. 
Parkman's case was altogether exceptional. Putting 
aside the drudge who turns out his daily pages of 
mediocrity, writers generally find their greatest dif- 
ficulty and their rarest success in keeping up the 
enthusiasm and sensibility that alone can attune their 
faculties to harmonious creation. But Parkman's 
difiiculty was not in arousing but in restraining his 
faculties. His most intimate literary companion 



166 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

wrote tHat his "maladies intensified his impulses to 
exertion and mental application, while they limited 
the hours he could wisely give to reading and writ- 
ing. "^ Though an invalid, he was blessed with 
a very remarkable exemption from an invalid's 
lassitude. He had an "inborn irritability of con- 
stitution" as he said, which made "labor a pas- 
sion and rest intolerable." His mysterious affection 
of the brain seems to have consisted in good part 
of this spurring force. He aptly described his 
condition as "that of a rider whose horse runs 
headlong, the bit between his teeth, or of a locomo- 
tive built of indifferent material, under a head of 
steam too great for its strength, hissing at a score 
of crevices, yet rushing on with accelerating speed 
to the inevitable smash." He said: "The exclu- 
sion of thought demanded an effort more severe 
than the writer ever put forth in any other cause." 
Thus his inability to work during many periods 
longer or shorter, was not due to mental inertia ; it 
sprang from the nervous conditions that made it often 
imprudent or at times even impossible to exercise 
the brain. During half a century he thus led a life 
of repressed activity, with spaces of complete idle- 
ness, at the best allowing himself but a brief play of 
his powers. His self-control was nowhere more note- 
worthy than in this restraint of the mind. His abil- 
ity to work at all depended on the repression of an 
impetuous temperament and a surplus of energy. 

1 Dr. George E. Ellis. 



PAROIAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 167 

The reasonableness of his nature is shown by his 
success. After actual illness came upon him, and he 
saw that the "crushing out" policy was a mistake in 
dealing with his maladies, he always showed great 
common sense and docility in regulating his habits 
according to medical advice. But in one particular 
he persistently refused obedience — he would not 
give up his literary labor wholly, even when the 
doctors forbade it under threats of the most serious 
consequences; and when they told him to prepare 
for death, he straightway prepared to write books. 
With this supernormal energy continually furnishing 
a high pressure of nervous force to his ambition and 
imaginaltion, and with good sense controlling and 
concentrating his powers on one purpose, he was, in 
a measure, independent of a surplus of health for 
creative power. 

His relations to his work were thus far from un- 
fortunate; they enabled him to wring many advan- 
tages and compensations from his restrictions. One 
may say even that his disabilities constrained him 
to reach a standard not wholly in accord with his 
natural tendencies. The predominance of the utili- 
tarian over the spiritual in his temperament, his 
eagerness, his love of the tangible and effective, all 
made him dislike the scholastic idea of perfection. 
In his own special field he worked under a driving 
desire to tell his story and the whole of it, and 
under a fear that his strength might not hold out 
even from one volume to the next. It would seem, 



168 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

therefore, that his dominant qualities and defects, 
and many of his circumstances forbade much linger- 
ing over his work in the love of artistic perfection. 
But fate in some measure forced him to build better 
than he would. Able when in medium health to 
visit historic localities, examine documents, direct 
researches and transcriptions, plan his books, digest 
and arrange materials, thus pushing forward the 
easier and more clerical parts of his labors, he was 
compelled by his infirmities to compose only when in 
his best condition. Thus he followed the plainest 
requirements of all who expect to do their best, 
whether prize-fighter or poet. It is doubtful that 
with his temperament he would have shown this 
professional conscientiousness had health left him 
perfect freedom. In one respect, however, he com- 
mended himself to the perfectionist's pains though 
not to his spirit. In regard to accuracy he was a 
worker of inexhaustible patience and thoroughness. 
Here no delay, no trouble, no minutiae appeared to 
him fastidious. In the preface to "Pontiac " he thus 
acknowledged his indebtedness to his misfortunes : 

"I am well convinced that the authorities have been 
even more minutely examined, more scrupulously collated, 
and more thoroughly digested, than they would have been 
under more ordinary circumstances." ^ 

And so it was that he wrung the greatest compen- 
sation from adversity. One day in 1886, in talking 

1 Pontiac, p. xii. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 169 

of his books, I expressed, in a few words, my admira- 
tion for them, and my hope that he would be able to 
complete the series. To my surprise he replied, with 
a tone of firmness and some reserved meaning quite 
mysterious to me: "That doesn't matter much." I 
felt that I ought not to question him ; and in recall- 
insf the remark often since then, I have not been able 
to find a place for it in his character or his strenuous 
efforts, so long continued. Possibly he felt that he 
had already done enough work under such trials to 
prove his valor. And although nothing would have 
got from him any expression of the thought, self- 
justification under a life so burdened with inactivi- 
ties must have been exceptionally dear to one with 
such a passionate love of energy and honor. 

Did Parkman succeed in keeping his weakness out 
of his work? Composing as he did, very slowly, and 
only in his best hours, he almost accomplished this 
impossibility. The first twenty years of his labors 
— from 1847 to 1868 — contained the most of suffer- 
ing and interruption; then during the next twenty 
years his brain and his eyes slowly improved a little, 
so that he enjoyed his best powers of thinking and 
seeing in his last decade of life. Yet as regards the 
greater number of its component elements, the work 
went on with remarkable independence of these 
fluctuations. The large lines of construction for 
unity and dramatic effect; the thoroughness of 
research ; the digestion of material ; the selection and 
condensation of matter for rapidity of movement; 



170 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN" 

the accuracy and fulness of statement — in all these 
points no weakness is shown, even in the volumes 
written during his worst epochs. Such qualities 
could be reached by slow and patient labor. But the 
subtle matter of style springs too much from moods 
and conditions to be wholly under the guidance of 
skill and industry; and it seems to me that some 
reflection of his condition may be seen in his books. 
"Pontiac," for example, is fascinating not only by 
its vigorous picturesqueness, but also for the color, 
flow, and fervor of its diction. Although produced 
under great difficulties, it was written before he had 
been permanently affected by his hard experience. 
His mental habits and creative faculties had not then 
suffered from the effects of physical infirmities, con- 
tinual interruptions, remouldings of self to meet new 
conditions, and the strain of prolonged efforts for 
self-control. The wonder is that he escaped so well 
in subsequent volumes the inevitable effects of his 
condition. 

The mechanical and clerical details of his method 
of working may be easily described. Extreme sensi- 
tiveness of sight obliged him to employ the eyes of 
others for almost all his reading and writing. In his 
researches abroad he would take some educated man 
with him to a library, spending as many hours a day 
as his strength allowed in listening to the reading of 
documents, and in noting what he should need for 
subsequent and more thorough study of a subject. 
These labors of the book-worm, "abundantly irk- 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 171 

some," as he acknowledged them to be under any 
circumstances, were especially wearisome when using 
other men's eyes for hunting through historical hay- 
stacks for possible needles. With his own eyes he 
could have gleaned with a glance, but now he must 
listen to every paragraph for fear of losing in some un- 
important and tedious paper a desirable item or refer- 
ence. Then to avoid continually crossing the sea he 
must examine with care a large range of subjects in 
each visit ; he must consider not only all the points 
concerning a given epoch, but also the bearing of 
these details on the larger interests of his whole 
series. But whatever his condition or the severity 
of the task might be, he never shirked the pursuit 
of every clue and the examination of every original 
source of information, nor depended on another's 
judgment in any important matter. He always held 
his subject in the firmest grasp, and directed his 
assistants with a clear knowledge and a firm hand. 
Under such disabilities for writing he naturally 
took as few notes as possible, and developed a very 
retentive memory. As the sensitiveness of his eyes 
often made it impossible for him to look at paper 
while writing, he caused to be constructed what he 
called his "gridiron." This simple invention was an 
indispensable companion in all his labor up to the 
completion of " La Salle " in 1869. After these first 
and worst twenty years, he was able to use his eyes 
enough to make notes, at least, without such a 
guide. 



172 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

Copying and collecting documents formed an im- 
portant division of his labors. It was impracticable 
for him to compose away from home. His working 
power depended on the most careful hygiene, and on 
the help of assistants far more devoted and consider- 
ate than any that could be hired. As he based his 
works on original sources, the most of which had 
not been printed, he had to have copies made of a 
vast number of papers. This expensive process cost 
him a considerable part of his fortune ; and he used 
to say that the income from his books would never 
give him much more than the cost of his preparatory 
labors. Having in hand the lists and calendars made 
in his own researches, he could safely direct the col- 
lection of his materials. He engaged responsible and 
experienced students and collectors in Canada, Paris, 
London, to employ copyists, verify the accuracy of 
their transcriptions, and ship the manuscripts to him 
at Boston. Having thus collected all his material 
in his study, he felt himself master of the situa- 
tion. He could work whenever he was able, and 
when unable, wait for health to return. 

Parkman's characteristic reserve was especially 
noticeable in regard to his work. He kept his inner 
workshop locked, and a sign of "no admittance" on 
the door. The more literary and intellectual steps 
of his labors are therefore not so easily traced as the 
clerical and mechanical details. There were among 
his diaries, letters, notes, papers, no skeletons or 
guides for the construction of his works. This is the 



PAEKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 173 

more remarkable from his knowledge of the precari- 
ousness of his working powers, and his experience of 
frequent and long interruptions. Fourteen years 
passed between the production of "Pontiac" and of 
" The Pioneers," — ten of them in absolute separation 
from his labor; while other interruptions, long or 
short, continually broke up the course of his thought. 
His progress at best was made by short steps under 
such distracting conditions that a detailed chart of 
his course would seem to have been indisj)ensable. 
Yet there is no evidence that he ever had such guides 
on paper. Once, however, he communicated to a 
friend ^ at least a general intention concerning " Mont- 
calm and Wolfe " : 

' ' Le plan de mon ouvrage sur la guerre de 1755-63 
n'est pas encore arrete, mais en vue des dangers qui 
menacent toujours les monuments historiques dans ce 
beau volcan qu'on appelle Paris, je voudrais bien avoir 
entre les mains la partie la plus essentielle des documents 
qui regardent ces evenements. J'essayerai peut-etre 
d'ecrire I'liistoire de la guerre depuis son commencement ; 
peut-etre je me bornerai au periode compris entre I'arrive 
de Montcalm et sa mort, faisant du grand marquis la 
figure central de la piece, et groupant les evenements 
autour de lui. Ce plan me semble etre le plus simple et 
le plus dramatique, mais il demande des renseignements 
les plus dtendus et les plus intimes sur les annees dont il 
est question."^ 

1 M. Pierre Margry, no date. 

2 Translation : " The plan of my work on the war of 1755-63 is 
not yet determined, but in view of the dangers that always threaten 



174 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PAROIAN 

Despite the absence of much that we fain would 
know, we can give a few of the external facts con- 
cerning his method of examining documents and 
composing his books. In beginning a volume he had 
all the documents concerning it read to him, the first 
time for the cjiief features of the subject. While 
this reading was in progress he made, now and then^ 
a short note, or walked over from his shady corner 
to where the reader sat in the light, to mark a pas- 
sage for future reference. The margins of his 
volumes of documents contain almost no writing, — 
merely crosses, double crosses, and vertical lines in 
red pencil. He could not listen to this reading for 
more than an hour or two per day in even his best 
health, and with the help of frequent rests, requiring 
in the reader a quiet manner, a low voice, and a slow 
pace. Having very rarely sight and strength enough 
to work at stated times, he seldom kept a salaried 
amanuensis. His assistant was generally some mem- 
ber of his household ; at other times he employed a 
pupil from the public school. As most of his mate- 
rial was in French, of which the pupil was ignorant, 
and in old French at that, the reading often seemed 

historical monuments in the splendid volcano named Paris, I 
should like to have in hand the most essential portion of the doc- 
uments concerning those events. Perhaps I shall try to write the 
history of the war from its beginning; perhaps I shall confine 
myself to the period comprised between the arrival of Montcalm 
and his death, making the great marquis the central figure of the 
composition, aud grouping events about him. This plan seems to 
me the simplest and the most dramatic, but it demands the most 
intimate and extensive knowledge of that epoch." 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 175 

anything but the accurate and serious information re- 
quired by a historian. Then came a second reading, 
during which he noted accessory matters and details 
of the story ; and sometimes a third examination was 
needed of portions of his great mass of documents. 
By this slow method he acquired perfect possession 
of the materials needed for a volume. He then set 
to work at composition, always finishing one volume 
before touching another. His inability to -compose 
rapidly, as we have already seen, offered some very 
valuable compensations for difficulties and delays. 
It forced him to consider well his plan, to digest his 
material thoroughly ; and by keeping him living for 
some time in each part of his subject as he went 
along, secured freedom and leisure for the exercise of 
both imagination and judgment. 

In the long hours of enforced solitude and idleness 
in the subdued light of his study, or during his 
sleepless nights, his subject pressed upon him with 
the insistence of an absorbing interest. It is easy to 
understand that his hardest effort was to keep his 
mind at rest. Few men could have sustained their 
interest and power under such tedious delays; but 
he had precisely the faculties needed to meet the 
situation, — breadth and firmness of grasp for details 
and general lines, a retentive memory, great construc- 
tive skill, and a vivid imagination, — the whole 
driven by supernormal energy. When it came to 
writing or dictating the book, he had each day's pro- 
duction already arranged, probably some of it com- 



176 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

posed and memorized. He dictated at a moderate 
pace — sometimes holding a few notes in his hand — 
without hesitation and with a degree of finish sel- 
dom requiring any correction. At the close of the 
morning he would listen to what had been written 
down, and make necessary changes. During the day 
he would look over the composition, for he never 
failed to verify his citations and authorities himself, 
or to paste with his own hand his notes on the bot- 
tom of the pages. The only record of his methodical 
habits of working is the orderly arrangement of his 
papers in bound volumes, and the presence of the 
word "used" written on each paper when he had 
taken its substance. But although methodical, he 
was never fastidious or finical. He marched on as 
well as he could, with his mind on large, practical, 
and tangible results more than on niceties of method 
or execution. 

His amanuenses still speak of their wonder in wit- 
nessincp the creation of his books. It must have 
been, indeed, interesting to watch the transformation 
operated by the magic of his imagination, — the liv- 
ing characters and real scenes suddenly brought forth 
from dry and disconnected facts read to him in bits 
for months, or even years. One could hardly get a 
more intimate contact with the artistic faculty, at 
least in its activities of preparation and execution. 
During the last few years of his life his eyes allowed 
him to write quite freely for very short periods of 
time. Thus he was able to write out by himself, 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 177 

with pencil on orange colored paper, the greater part 
of his "Half Century" and "Montcalm and Wolfe." 
This manuscript shows very few corrections. He 
had become master of a fluent, chaste, and simple 
diction. 

His method cannot be dismissed without referring 
to his exceptional efforts for accuracy, though we 
can say but little concerning his special means of 
attaining this marked characteristic of his work. 
Proofs enough of his efforts are seen in his pages and 
in the collection of documents he accumulated. The 
few letters which he wrote and received show what 
pains he took to examine every possible source, both 
public and private, in America and Europe. He 
was averse, however, to the overloading of pages 
with citations, especially those referring to collateral 
and illustrative matter, which must necessarily pre- 
dominate "where," as he said, "one adhering to 
facts tries to animate them with the life of the 
past." One of his letters reveals his pursuit and 
careful verification of detail. He wrote to an emi- 
nent astronomer : ^ 

''I believe there is a difference between the way of 
estimating latitude in the seventeenth century and now. 
Can you without much trouble tell me how this is? In 
1685 La Salle calculated a certain point on the Gulf of 
Mexico at 28° 18'. What would this correspond to on a 
modern map? How can I ascertain if a comet — a some- 
what remarkable one — was visible from the site of 

1 His classmate, Dr. B. A. Gould, June 26, 1868. 
12 



178 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

Peoria, Illinois, in January, 1681? Also, how can I 
ascertain on what day of the month Easter Monday, 
1680, occurred? I want the information to test the ac- 
curacy of certain journals in my possession." 

His pursuit of the truth was shown by his saga- 
city and persistence in ferreting out documents, such 
as the letters of Montcalm to Bourlamaque, for which 
he hunted fifteen years. His care and judgment in 
weighing evidence are displayed on every page. 
Finally, his love of accuracy carried him cheerfully 
through the historian's most trying experience, — 
the revision of his works. In writing to a friend 
apropos of "La Salle," he stated the feeling that 
animated him from the beginning to the end of his 
career : " Should evidence turn up showing me to be 
anywhere in error, in fact or in judgment, I shall 
recant at once, as I care for nothing but to get the 
truth of the story. "^ When at last the materials 
that had been unjustly refused him were published 
through Parkman's own efforts, he rewrote con- 
siderable parts of "La Salle" without complaint. 
The revision of his works was still going on at 
the time of his death; and he proposed a still more 
important revision after the publication of " A Half 
Century." Possibly it was the uncertainty of his 
life and working power that led him to cast his 
subject in monographs, enabling him to finish the 
work in pieces as he went along; it is certain that 
he did not regard his history as complete. While 
1 Letter to J. G. Shea, Dec. 14, 1867. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 179 

each volume is a whole in itself, one notes a de- 
ficiency in the larger lines of connection with the 
Franco-English struggles, and with the history of 
the American colonies. He intended to make this 
connection closer and more apparent by remoulding 
his monographs into a continuous narrative. Unfor- 
tunately he was not spared to put these harmonizing 
touches to his work. 

Professor Fiske, in speaking of Parkman's perse- 
verance under difficulties, says: 

*' The heroism shown year after year in contending with 
physical ailments was the index of a character fit to be 
mated, for its pertinacious courage, with the heroes that 
live in his shining pages." ^ 

1 John Fiske. Introductory Essay (1897). 



CHAPTER IX 

Aet being the inevitable revelation of the soul 
producing it, the artist's character and productions 
serve each to the other as a revealing light. A study 
of Parkman made from either his books or his life 
alone would be deficient in some essential feature. 
For his Puritan blood barred him from freedom in feel- 
ing and utterance, while in writing, his philosophy of 
historical composition and his identification with liis 
theme ruled out any explicit expressions of personal 
thoughts and emotions. But no man's work is im- 
personal, if the analysis be pushed far enough. We 
shall see that under the shelter of Parkman's reserve 
and his philosophy of art, he yet found more or less 
free play in a theme suited to his temperament. 

Parkman's philosophy of historical writing is a 
clear illustration of the practicalness and simplicity 
of his character. In this as in other things, he knew 
his own nature, and formed his aims and methods 
accordingly. He seems, indeed, to have formed his 
philosophy as early as he chose his topic ; or else fol- 
lowing from the start his natural tendencies, he per- 
haps worked according to his philosophy before it was 
formulated. His writings cannot be divided into 



PAROIAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 181 

epoclis or manners ; for although his style developed 
with the gradual improvement of his taste and skill, 
his work is a unit as to aims and method. 

His philosophy is nowhere stated in clear terms. 
He had no inclination to reveal his creed; and his 
theme rarely demanded more than simple narration 
and description. As every artist, however, derives 
his working formula from his tastes and beliefs, so 
Parkman's philosophy of writing necessarily sprang 
from his philosophy of life. We can judge, therefore, 
of the invisible foundations of his historical structure 
both from his general attitude towards civilization 
and the incidental revelations of his pages. From 
these data it seems to me that his deepest interest in 
histoiy was embodied in the question : What kind 
of men and women did a given civilization produce ? 
Surely no interest can be compared for importance to 
this study of the growth of individual and national 
character. 

But his edifice rests also on desires and purposes 
that are more evident and above-ground. He built 
on these four cornerstones: (1) Sincerity; never 
stopping short of the utmost thoroughness and im- 
partiality. (2) Industry; which must not fail be- 
fore any amount of labor and hindrances. (3) 
Scholarship; which must embrace a knowledge of 
topics that are even remotely connected with his 
theme. (4) Identification with liis theme. The 
general spirit in which he worked is clearly set forth 
in these golden words : 



182 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

''Faithfulness to tlie truth of history involves far more 
than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into 
special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most 
minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, 
may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek 
to^imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He 
must study events in their bearings near and remote ; in 
the character, habits, and manners of those who took part 
in them. He must be, as it were, a sharer or spectator of 
the action he describes." ^ 

Coming now to still more tangible aims, the work- 
ing force of his method was the desire to tell his 
story with the utmost simplicity, accuracy, and vivid- 
ness. The various merits of his work flowed from 
these aims as a stream from its sources. He believed 
that a history should be an artistic creation, having 
due regard to unity, and with large purposes sweeping 
on to an effective climax. But he never regarded artis- 
tic aims as an excuse for neglecting prosaic or adverse 
facts, or for twisting history into drama. In striving 
to exclude all that could be spared, he was not led 
to neglect details, even the most minute. It is told 
of him that he criticised Bancroft for making his- 
tory too dignified. With his frequent vigor of lan- 
guage he said, " Damn the dignity of history ; straws 
are often the best materials." His objective and 
practical mind made him desire a very realistic 
method of treatment : he had no taste for sentiment 
or theories. 

1 Pioneers, p. xiv. 



PAROIAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 183 

One of the most important features of his method 
was a demand for original sources. He was one of 
the first to elevate this need and that of individual 
research to their modern importance, holding that 
the historian had not done his duty until he had 
examined every known or discoverable document 
relating to his theme. Parkman not only desired 
the original record of an event, and if possible one 
that was made by an eye-witness while memory and 
feeling were still vivid, but he wished this record to 
be given in its first state. "In mending the style 
and orthography, or even the grammar," he said, " one 
may rob a passage of its characteristic expression, till 
it ceases to mark the individuality of the man, or the 
nature of his antecedents and surroundings." Speak- 
ing of the editorial glosses of the letters of Dinwid- 
dle, he referred to their " good English without char- 
acter, while as written they were bad English with a 
great deal of character. The blunders themselves 
have meaning, for Dinwiddle was a blunderer, and 
should appear as such if he is to appear truly." ^ 

His method of historical writing included an- 
other aim that was purely a personal matter and 
very influential over the nature of his works. His 
history has been criticised as deficient in philosophic 
depth; and to the casual reader who gives himself 
up to the charm of his picturesque narration and 
description, this criticism may seem well founded. 
His pages are made up of facts, without either 

1 Winsor, The Atlantic Monthly, May, 1894, p. 662. 



184 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

generalizations, sermons, sentiments, or personal 
opinions. In explanation of this unusual reserve, 
it has been suggested that as generalizations cost a 
deal of hard thinking, he was deterred by his dis- 
orders of the nervous system from formulating his 
wisdom. This guess may have some truth, but it 
seems to be contradicted by all we know of his men- 
tal habits, character, and culture. His reverence for 
hard truth, and his matter-of-fact and practical turn 
of mind would have made him at least shy of gen- 
eralizations. The facts of experience and observation 
rather than the ideal elements, were his natural mate- 
rial. We have seen that at college he neglected phi- 
losophical studies and acquired a very special rather 
than a broad and general culture, and he was remark- 
able for early crystallization of aims, opinions, and 
methods. Again his inability to read much would 
probably have curtailed his subsequent excursions 
in philosophy had he looked in these directions. 
It seems, therefore, improbable that he would ever 
have written otherwise under any circumstances of 
health. Philosophizing on life may have seemed 
a too intimate self-revelation for his reserve, even 
when directed to impersonal or historical topics. 

In spite, however, of this evidence, Parkman really 
had a philosophical side, and a strongly marked one 
too. We have seen that he always studied individ- 
ual and national life and character with the interest 
of the keenest observer. He was distinctly a serious 
student; he always impressed people as a man of 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 185 

■wisdom. The facts are that with his moral earnest- 
ness, his keen perceptions, and his capable mind, he 
was of necessity a man of depth and ability in those 
directions that were opened to him by his organiza- 
tion. With little interest in spiritual, abstract, and 
metaphysical lines of thought, he possessed excep- 
tional strength and clearness in other directions. His 
intimates were continually discovering new veins of 
knowledge in him, especially in regard to history, na- 
ture, and human nature. It is difficult to determine 
his limitations in these fields: the records of his 
schooling and subsequent reading are too inade- 
quate : and even if they were full, they would hardly 
serve to gauge such a memory and such readiness of 
acquisition. The principal element of his wisdom 
was perhaps his strong common sense ; he studied 
life and history with the intelligence of an intensely 
practical man of scholarly interests. 

There were thus two opposing forces in him, — a 
philosophic interest in life, and a detestation of theo- 
rizing and moralizing. Parkman wrote as a non- 
philosophizing philosopher. As it happened, I heard 
from him one day a statement that seems authorita- 
tive as to both his general method and his practice. 
In discussing a book on French-Canadian life and 
character, he said to the author, " Describe them just 
as they are, and let the reader philosophize as much 
as he likes." " The Old Regime in Canada " reveals 
most clearly this rule of his method. The volume is 
full of political philosophy and object lessons of the 



186 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

clearest import, tliough without either sermons or 
theories. While weighing causes and effects, he 
seldom mentions them, or formulates any theories of 
growth. His pages are built up exclusively of facts ; 
but he presents these in such a way as to carry their 
own lesson. His work is just the opposite of Gar- 
neau's, which he said has the manner, but not the 
matter, of a philosophical history. 

Parkman's theme was the deepest joy of his life. 
It was at once the attraction and the means that led 
him onward through his trials to his intellectual and 
moral development. His practical relations to it are 
as interesting and characteristic as his philosophy of 
historical writing. Lowell says that " one of the 
convincing tests of genius is the choice of a theme . . . 
In the instinct that led him straight to subjects that 
seemed waiting for him so long, Mr. Parkman gave 
no uncertain proof of his fitness for an adequate 
treatment of them." Some have considered that the 
direction of his life was providential ; he himself said 
that it was governed by his tastes and a clear percep- 
tion, when still a mere youth, of his capacities and 
limitations. He thus told the story, looking back 
from 18781: 

'*Vous demandez pourquoi j'ai con^u le dessein d'e- 
crire I'histoire des FraiiQais en Amerique ? C'est tout 
simple. Dans ma jeunesse j'avais le gotit des lettres; et 
j'avais en meme temps ce des for§ts, de la chasse, des 
sauvages. Je frequentais (leurs) camps, je parcourais les 

1 Letter to M. Pierre Margry, Dec. 6, 1878. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN" IN HIS WORKS 187 

bois avec eux, j'y voyageais a pied et en canot. C'etait 
ainsi que je passais mes vacances. Eli bien, je compris 
de bonne heiire que ces deux gouts, des livres et des forets, 
pourraient se reconcilier, pourraient meme s'aider recipro- 
quement, dans le champ d'liistoire Franco-Americain." ^ 

He said again, in his autobiography (p. 351) : 

"Before the end of the sophomore year my various 
schemes had crystallized into a plan of writing the story 
of what was then known as the 'Old French War,' that 
is, the war that ended in the conquest of Canada, for here, 
as it seemed to me, the forest drama was more stirring 
and the forest stage more thronged with appropriate actors 
than in any other passage of our history. It was not till 
some years later that I enlarged the plan to include the 
whole course of the American conflict between France and 
England, or, in other words, the history of the American 
forest : for this was the light in which I regarded it. My 
theme fascinated me, and I was haunted with wilderness 
images day and night." 

His selection at that time did not seem so wise as 
it appeared when subsequent success had justified 
it. American history was not popular, and he had 

1 Translation : 

" Ton ask why I conceived the purpose of writing the history of 
the French in America ? The answer is very simple. In my youth 
I was fond of letters, and I also liked the forest, shooting, and the 
Indians. I frequented their camps, I roamed the woods with them, 
I went shooting, I journeyed on foot and in canoes. I passed my 
vacations in this way. Well, at an early day I saw that these 
two tastes, for books and for the forest, could be reconciled, could 
be made even mutually helpful, in the field of rranco-American 
history." 



188 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

to create a taste for his subject. His father, in 
common A^dth many others, took little interest in the 
old French Wars, — a contest of bushrangers for 
the possession of a wilderness. Parkman pointed 
out that this conflict was a very important event in 
the history of the world, since it decided the destiny 
of a continent. But his father continually ignored 
or forgot these excellent reasons, and called upon 
his son again and again to defend his selection. To 
most minds the subject was barren, "with spaces 
too vast, heroes too few, and savages too many." ^ 
His undertaking was all the more uncertain because 
of the unknown nature of his materials. As he 
said of these : 

'■'■ The field of the history was uncultured and unre- 
claimed, and the labor that awaited me was like that of 
the border settler, who, before he builds his rugged dwell- 
ing, must fell the forest trees, burn the undergrowth, 
clear the ground, and hew the fallen trunks in due 
proportion." 

While the topic, however, presented one great 
source of possible success — that of novelty, — his 
style was not considered sufficiently artistic to draw 
readers to an unpopular subject. Even that remark- 
able volume " The Conspiracy of Pontiac " was de- 
clined by one of the principal publishers of New 
York in obedience to his reader's opinion that " both 
the subject and the style " would deny the work 

1 Judge John Lowell, 



PARKMAN AS SEE-^'.'T m HIS WORKS 189 

any profitable success ; and tlie first reception of 
the book justified this opinion. The next work, 
"Vassall Morton," was a failure. Then, after the 
appearance of "Pontiac," wliich met with but a 
modicum of success, Parkman's state of health kept 
him for ten years unable to do any literary labor 
whatever. He thus began his career with what 
seemed only moderate talents and acliievements, and 
an outlook that was far from encouraging. But he 
had a true estimate of the possibilities contained in 
his theme, and a still stronger faith in his own rela- 
tions to it. When his wife, in her affectionate in- 
terest, asked him why he did not write on some 
European historical topic, which would interest the 
public, he answered that he "must write what he 
was made for." His mind indeed moved as gladly 
and freely in his chosen literary world as he had 
moved through the forest or over the prairie in his 
youth. The Franco-English contest was the last 
great struggle in which personal valor and address 
triumphed as they did in the days of chivalry. War 
had not then become a game played with long-range 
guns. Parkman could tlirow himself body and soul 
into this congenial subject ; and he found in it many 
interests not restricted to time and place. He had 
to offer the world a study of the last remains of 
primitive society in the stone age, — a picture of the 
life of the ancestors of every civilized nation of 
to-day ; he had to record the struggle and fall of the 
savage races before the civilized powers of Europe. 



190 A LIFE OF FR^^NCIS PARKMAN 

He had also to tell the longer story of the three- 
handed conflict between France, England, and the 
Indians for dominion in the new world. 

At first sight his history seems to be merely a 
chronicle of the contest ; and Parkman says in his 
autobiography that in his earlier years he regarded 
his subject as the history of the American forest 
Thanks to the scenery, the variety of races and 
characters, the nature of events and experiences, 
few epochs in history excel his in romance, pictur- 
esqueness, heroism, and adventure. The subject 
indeed might easily have demoralized a man of his 
nature and tastes, and seduced him to an undue 
expansion of these alluring elements. But fortu- 
nately his theme contained also many deeper prob- 
lems, and called for self-control, judgment, scholar- 
ship, and caution. He had in hand two opposing 
systems of civilization — that of feudal, militant, 
Catholic France in conflict with democratic, indus- 
trial, and Protestant England. He made this com- 
parison from all points of view, — religious, political, 
military, social, industrial, educational; he omitted 
nothing essential. He enjoyed a rare happiness — 
that of a new theme, perfectly fitted to the artist's 
hand. 



CHAPTER X 

We come now to Parkman's works ; or rather we 
are still approaching them through questions that 
probe to the centre of his character, 1. How much 
of the artistic temperament had he? 2. How far 
did his works answer the innermost, generative im- 
pulse of the artist to express and justify his person- 
ality? 3. What are the sources of the powerful 
effect of his books? 

1. Speaking with certain reservations, Parkman 
cannot be called an artist born. The love of beauty 
which springs from keen sense-perceptions acting on 
a mind gifted with spiritual insight, though influen- 
tial in some directions, was not a general force per- 
vading his personality. Yet nature in denying him 
a keen appreciation of the more delicate and poetic 
elements of beauty, or much interest in the fine arts, 
for their own sake, gave him the fullest enjoyment 
of what is virile, bold, and effective in the physical 
world and in literature. 

Nothing could have been more fortunate for him 
than the cultivation of his taste by his journeys to 
Europe. He thus recorded his own sense of this in 
1843-44; 



192 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

"I have now been three or four weeks in Rome — have 
been presented to his Holiness the Pope, have visited 
churches, convents, cemeteries, catacombs, common sewers, 
including the Cloaca Maxima, and ten thousand works of 
art. This will I say of Rome, — that a place on every 
account more interesting, and which has a more vivifying 
and quickening influence on the faculties, could not be 
found on the face of the earth, — or at least I should not 
wish to go to it if it could." 

But in spite of the interest revealed by this one 
passage, the only one reflecting much enthusiasm for 
the creations of man, the beautiful in nature was far 
more to him. He scarcely mentioned works of art 
in his leisurely journey through Italy; but he de- 
scribed at length scenery, men, life, manners and 
customs. 

His artistic sensibilities should be judged chiefly 
in connection with his own art of writing, as we shall 
do presently ; yet his relations to the other arts are 
not without interest. Architecture, judging by his 
diaries, must have interested him most of all, though 
his references to it do not show any critical enjoy- 
ment of its beauties. Here are the only passages 
that seem of any importance, and the first one, by 
its emphasis, shows plainly that his tastes lay in a 
different direction : 

"A weary week of lionizing. I would not give a damn 
for all the churches and ruins in Rome, — at least such 
are my sentiments at present. There is unbounded sub- 
limity in the Coliseum by moonlight, — that cannot be 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 193 

denied; St. Peter's too, is a miracle in its way, — but I 
would give them all for one ride on horseback among the 
Apennines." "The Milan Cathedral is worthy of Kome, 
— I like it as well as St. Peter's." 

After visiting it from vault to roof, he said further : 

"With every visit the beauty and majesty of its hun- 
dred and sixty marble columns, of its rich tombs, its carv- 
ings, the rich fretwork of the roof and dome, and of the 
windows painted [withj the histories of saints, strike you 
with a stronger effect." 

Of painting and sculpture also he said very little. 
Their chief attraction was their worth as human 
documents and historical data; painted landscapes, 
even of the wilderness, were still less important. 
The gallery of all Europe that interested him most 
was that of Versailles, with its pictures and statues 
of historic scenes and persons. When surrounded 
by the treasures of Rome, he found it worth while 
to make only this entry concerning art : 

"There is an artist here, Overbeck, from Germany, 
who is a man of wonderful genius. I visited his studio 
to-day. His works are scarce more than sketches with a 
pencil, — but every face may be an hour's study, and 
speaks plainer than words the character of its author's 
mind, mild, earnest, and devout to enthusiasm. All his 
subjects are scriptural." 

When in Milan, he found no more to say of 
Leonardo's " Last Supper," a work that by its extra- 
ordinary force and distinctness of characterization 

13 



194 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

should have impressed him as a student of men 
than this : 

"Leonardo da Vinci's 'Last Supper' is here — in the 
refectory of a suppressed convent, — but miserably in- 
jured, or rather destroyed by the dampness of three cen- 
turies and a half. An old man, who has charge of the 
place, told me that he was at the bridge of Lodi and 
was a sergeant at Marengo." 

The stage had no deep interest for him. Aside 
from the little people's theatres at Naples, he men- 
tions none in his diaries, not even the Frangais when 
he was at Paris. Yet as a schoolboy we have seen 
him an eager and successful actor ; and at the time of 
this journey he was very much given to the study of 
men. He seems early to have abandoned the histri- 
onic art as completely as he did chemistry. Perhaps 
in common with many keen observers of character, 
he was repelled by the artificialities of theatrical pres- 
entation. It may be said, however, that although 
he was not a lover of the theatre, he would probably 
have gone oftener than he did to see a first-rate actor 
or play, if his eyes could have endured bright lights. 

Music was an unknown world to him ; it never 
attracted him at any time of his life. Yet he liked 
the Fifth Symphony, and he had one favorite song 
in his last years, " Sam Hall," whose dramatic force, 
grim humor, virility, and anti-clerical sentiments de- 
lighted him. 

His appreciation of painting and the other fine arts 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 195 

grew somewhat with the greater development of his 
spiritual nature. In the later part of his life he 
spent much of his enforced idleness in looking at 
illustrations and photographs ; he enjoyed the perfec- 
tion of Japanese pictures of birds, fishes, monkeys, 
and flowers ; and had in his study some of Barye's 
statuettes of animals ; also many engravings — chiefly 
portraits of historic persons. Undoubtedly a part of 
his failure to develop taste in these directions was 
due to his sensitive eyes ; but the root of the matter 
lay in his physical and mental organization. 

A glance at Parkman's relations to nature will not 
be devoid of interest, to show how happily they con- 
formed to his sensuous and mental sensibilities, to 
the aims of his ambition, and to the nature of his pro- 
ductions. We have seen that though his senses were 
not very highly developed, his sight was in many 
ways keen, as in woodcraft and the study of the 
natural sciences. In spite of this, he had little ap- 
preciation of the more spiritual elements of beauty ; 
he seldom remarked the charm of colors, forms, or 
lines in graceful composition. Even in his favorite 
pastime of horticulture, his attraction to flowers 
sprang largely from other things than their beauty. 
The processes of hybridization and growth, the won- 
der of new varieties, the vigor and perfection of a 
well grown specimen, — these things held his inter- 
est. But he showed no taste or care in the laying 
out of his garden to secure pleasing effects, and sel- 
dom remarked the beauty of a flower or an autumn leaf. 



196 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

He lacked also the poet's gift of sjiiipathy that 
connects nature with humanity, and the poet-natu- 
ralist's eye for the inner life and spirit of living 
creatures. Two of his strongest characteristics were 
love of the real and aversion to the visionary and 
spiritual ; and such a nature can hardly include the 
poet's capacity for contemplation and revery. He 
loved nature, but not as a lover who sits down 
quietly for intimate communion. He could not 
abide Wordsworth and his followers. Although 
admitting that Thoreau was a notable man, he had 
little sympathy with liim ; he felt repelled by what 
he considered Thoreau's eccentricities, transcenden- 
talism, self-consciousness, and affectation of being 
natural. Parkman's interest in nature lay in quite a 
different direction. Were we to confine our atten- 
tion to the externality of his ap23reciation, and his 
need of a knowledge of her for literary reasons, we 
should commit the error of saying that he was more 
an observer than a lover of nature. It naturally 
follows that he cared not at all for highly humanized 
landscapes. The charms of rural England are not 
mentioned in his diaries, neither does he record any- 
where the sight of picturesque compositions in New 
England, where with the simplest means man has 
unconsciously made some of the most charming pic- 
tures. Judged by his diaries and conversation, he 
saw no beauty in these rough yet not wild scenes ; 
much less did he feel the subtle connection between 
this beauty and the pathetic, passionate human expe- 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 197 

riences which it framed. He saw only the objection- 
able effects of meddling with nature, the destruction 
of his beloved wilderness. He acknowledged in a 
way his limitations, when descending the Mohawk 
Valley in 1845 : " I am getting a stronger relish 
for quiet beauties." We cannot but respect his per- 
fect freedom from sentimentality, and from the slight- 
est pretence of admiring what he did not feel. 

Along the lines opened to him by liis organization 
and his literary projects, his love of nature was very 
strong indeed. These were the lines that gratified 
his love of adventure and the picturesque. The 
wilderness with its free life was perhaps more to 
him than the softer charms of nature. As his 
diaries frequently show, he took great pleasure in 
what is vast, powerful, savage; often noting the 
large effects of light and atmosphere over a land- 
scape, breathing most freely on a mountain top sur- 
rounded by limitless plains, responding best to the 
roaring life and irrepressible activity of cataracts, to 
the wild energy of a storm sweeping over the prairie 
or the ocean. In spite of the silence of the diaries 
on this point, we know that his love of thoroughness 
and realism were gratified in the natural sciences. 
He enjoyed the firmer grasp of nature to be had in 
the details of rocks, soils, trees, plants, and animals ; 
— these things gave him close contact with the actual 
life of the wilderness. He noted the elements that 
affect life there, especially the means of subsistence 
and the exigencies of travel. Lakes, streams, 



198 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

swamps, ranges of mountains, windfalls, tangled 
undergrowth, laurel thickets, game, and fish, tlxe 
trails of animals and men — he delighted in all such 
features, both for themselves and for their practi- 
cal connection with the ever present object of his 
ambition. 

It has been said that the love of the wilderness 
was his ruling passion. He himself refers to it in 
his autobiographic paper, saying that it " gained full 
control of the literary pursuit to which he was also 
addicted." This was undoubtedly true of liim as 
a young man, but it seems equally true that his 
deepest interest in life and his greatest enjoyment 
soon came to be centred in the writing of histor3\ 
It is surprising that he should never once have 
sought the wilderness during forty years after his 
trip to the Rocky Mountains. His lameness natu- 
rally made travel in the woods difficult; yet he 
often journeyed far to collect historic material. 
But it is probable that he loved the adventures 
of a wild life more than the wilderness itself; and 
therefore neither the woods nor the prairies had of 
themselves power to attract him after his infirmi- 
ties denied him perfect freedom in physical activity. 
Certainly he drove on his literary labors in sj)ite of 
obstacles, with a persistence, courage, and energy 
that would have enabled him frequently to visit 
the wilderness had the love of nature been his 
dominant passion. 

We who to-day read his books are interested to 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 199 

see how admirably his relations to nature served 
his needs as a historian. His scientific knowledge 
would not be called profound in these days of 
specialists — it was chiefly the knowledge of an 
intelligent and keen-eyed observer. Yet it was 
more than sufficient for his purposes, enabling him 
to give reality to the scenes of his history, by speci- 
fying the fauna, the flora, the rocks and earth of 
which they were composed. No less than this ex- 
actness and realism would have satisfied his stand- 
ard of thoroughness. The very externality of his 
relations to nature was fortunate. The poet's dream- 
land, the poet-naturalist's humanized scenes, and the 
scientific minutiae of the naturalist would each have 
been more or less dangerous interests. What he 
needed was just what he had, a ready feeling for 
large natural forces and effects, a keen perception of 
the picturesque elements of a scene, and a moder- 
ately scientific knowledge of the geologic and botanic 
make-up of a landscape. 

But to return to his relations to art. A definite 
ambition was very early mingled with taste in his 
pursuit of poetry; but as his favorite authors were 
Scott, Byron, and Cooper, it seems probable that this 
kind of reading was chosen to gratify his love of 
activity and chivalry quite as much as his love of 
art. At all events, this line was soon abandoned, 
and the love of mere beauty in writing never again 
showed itself as a notable element in either his liter- 
ary studies or recreation. Oratory interested him 



200 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

much for its importance in directing public opinion 
in our democracy, and we have seen him an active 
member of the debating societies in Harvard College 
and the Law School ; but there is no evidence that 
he felt any special pleasure in it as an art. He sel- 
dom went to hear noted speakers or actors. 

His skill in writing appears most clearly in the 
structural elements of composition. He was always 
bent on large lines and proportions, in spite of the 
abundance of details that he compelled to contribute 
to the general effect, using them so as to secure great 
rapidity of movement. Perhaps the only interrup- 
tions of liis admirable dramatic march are some of 
the more lengthy descriptions of nature. It was here 
that he expressed beauty the most clearly. These 
passages show how beguiling to his imagination were 
the beloved woodland scenes, now to be recalled 
only in the shadow of his study. He also possessed 
a fine instinct for choosing the centre of interest 
and getting the right perspective. Thus, chiefly 
through the possession of strong common sense, he 
became truly an artist, even at times a poet ; but he 
dealt so little with the purely aesthetic and spiritual 
elements that he cannot be classed with poets in 
general. This non-philosophizing philosopher wrote 
profound history without generalizing ; this unpoet- 
ical poet, by a singular union of realism and pictur- 
esqueness, painted scenes and told stories full of 
imaginative effect. 

Coming now to a consideration of his style, we 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 201 

find it everywhere well fitted to his sincerity of 
thought, to his dominant desire for vividness, 
strength, and clearness, though lacking in the more 
sensuous charms of diction. In talking with him 
one day of the gifts needed for the literary profes- 
sion, he regretted his unmusical ear ; he seldom 
would listen to authors whose chief merit lay in 
the charm of their diction; and, indeed, he had a 
distinct aversion for the professed litterateur. 

There would seem to be a close connection between 
Parkman's comparative deficiency in sensuous sensi- 
bilities and liis frequent use of high coloring and 
strong language. In his pronounced taste for what 
is well emphasized in nature and in writing, there 
was a strong contrast to his love of quietness 
and simplicity in life, and hatred for what is showy 
or theatrical. Tliis tendency is most evident in his 
earlier works ; and it is an interesting fact in his 
growth that several decades were required to reach 
the simplicity and gentleness in style that distin- 
guished his maturer character. Native impetuosity 
and love of action being denied their scope, he clothed 
the vivid conceptions of his mental world with force- 
ful terms. In his diaries of " The Oregon Trail " the 
style is natural, simple, sometimes plain almost to bald- 
ness. But when with " Pontiac " he formally entered 
the lists as historian, something of his native simplicity 
disappeared — perhaps under the high pressure of 
youthful exuberance and self-confidence, or the recol- 
lection of his rhetorical masters. He himself came to 



202 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

consider this work as turgid and too highly colored. 
Yet here is shown in its highest development the 
chief excellence of his writing: its picture-painting 
quality. 

There is another curious opposition between the 
exuberance of his style and his extreme reserve. 
With a sensuous organization which naturally inclined 
him to forcible expression, his Puritan reserve held in 
check all excess of sentiment and feeling. Thus 
caution modified his impetuosity, making him a man 
of under- rather than over-statement. 

Parkman's love of strong language, however, some- 
times got free play in the intimacy of friendly inter- 
course. Nothing could be more unexpected from this 
dignified and reserved gentleman than his outbursts 
of jocose exaggeration and ridicule, touched off with 
a bit of profanity ; such outbursts were generally 
fired at contemporary men or measures that he did 
not approve. His swearing was ruled by its defini- 
tion as " superfluous profanity ; " it never reflected 
either vulgarity or any degree of the sacrilegious 
spirit. So far as I know, his swearing was limited to 
an occasional but emphatic damn, and this expletive 
often arose from nervous irritability more than from 
any other cause. The following extract from his diaiy, 
written in 1844 at Edinburgh, shows how he regarded 
the matter : 

*' In the castle are the regalia of Scotland, the crown, 
sword, scepter, and jewels, the first worn by Robert Bruce 
and all who succeeded him till Charles II.'s time. They 



PAROIAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 203 

were hidden from the light for many years. The soldier 
pointed out the heavy oaken chest where they lay con- 
cealed, until the Scottish nation should have forgotten 
its ancient independence and become content under its 
' annexation ' to England. I remembered the scene just 
after the opening of the chest, when a party of literati 
and ladies were looking at these insignia of ancient glory, 
and one frivolous fellow lifted the crown to place it on the 
head of a simpering young lady. 'No! By God,' ex- 
claimed Scott, who stood by. The man blushed like scar- 
let and laid the crown down. There is a power in a 
little profanity when it comes from a moved spirit." 

It may be added that liis love of strength for its own 
sake sometimes led him to indulge in humorous 
exaggeration. Moreover, his rules of damnation w^ere 
not rigid, for he would now and then damn a thing 
for which he had not the most utter contempt. 

In the progress of his literary career his prudential 
traits, together with prolonged infirmities, imposed 
beneficial restraints on his style^ While the necessary 
slowness of composition, much meditation, and con- 
tinual practice naturally improved his taste and skill, 
the fashion of the times also moulded him here, by 
changing from scholastic formality of expression to 
greater freedom and naturalness. But after all, his 
best powers came directly from his spiritual growth, 
under both suffering and success. Self-control, 
serenity, and the more delicate powers of sympathy 
had to come to him, before his style could reflect 
them in the chastened diction of " Montcalm and 



204 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PAROIAN 

Wolfe." He regarded this volume as his best work ; 
and certainly it represents him at his ripest, after the 
sunshine of success had permeated his strong nature 
with its mellowing rays. 

2. It is manifest from what precedes that Park- 
man's books bear a very close relation to his character. 
Indeed the inexorable revelations of every form of 
art make it impossible for the artist to elude his 
autobiography ; the question is not as to the reality 
of the revelation, but who has the eye to read it. 
Having as a key our personal knowledge of him, we 
may hope to see at least something of him in his works, 
and find out how far they reveal and justify his 
personality. 

Parkman's love of truth was almost a religion, 
and his work might be taken as the altar of his self- 
sacrifice. In this cult he knew no limit of pains, no 
fluctuations of feeling. " When you credit me with 
loyalty and honor," he writes, "you give me praise 
that I value most of all." ^ The honesty of citation 
that has been remarked in his pages, is only a small 
part of tlie sincerity of his work. His Puiitan con- 
science was ever on the watch against the strong 
temptations offered by the picturesqueness of his 
theme and his own love of striking effects ; and 
anticipating that these dangers would be felt by the 
reader of his graphic pages, he gave this assurance 
of his exactness : 

"If at times it may seem that range has been allowed 
to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest 
1 To Abbe Casgrain, Jan. 26, 1872. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 205 

details of narrative or description rest on authentic docu- 
ments or on personal observation." ^ 

But his work shows that love of truth did not 
stop at this primary need of accuracy, of which we 
have spoken in previous pages. Sincerity with him 
rose to impartiality in all historical questions, despite 
the strongest prejudices in relation to contemporary 
men and movements. This apparent inconsistency 
is easily explained by the obvious difference between 
historical and contemporary studies, also by his 
strong conservatism as regards modern civilization. 
It is rarely possible to collect all the evidence in a 
contemporary matter, or to free it from the distor- 
tions of passion, prejudice, and a too near point of 
view. But in writing history Parkman collected 
all the authorities, weighed the evidence with ex- 
ceptional care, coolness, and wisdom, and finally 
gave his opinion, entirely independent of feeling. 
His conservatism met in his themes little to call it 
forth in the expression of prejudices ; but even if 
it had been aroused, the completeness of the evi- 
dence and his love of scholarship and fairness would 
still have made him impartial. The following ex- 
tracts from a letter in reply to a French Canadian 
critic 2 are of interest here : 

''I am an abound of the 'Revue Canadienne,' and have 
just read your article on 'The Old Regime,' with attention 
and interest. It is very much what I had expected, 

1 Pioneers, p. xiv. 

2 To Abbe Casgrain, May 9, 1875. 



206 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

knowing your views and the ardor with which you em- 
brace them, as well as the warmth and kindliness of 
your feelings. I could take issue squarely on the prin- 
cipal points you make, but it would make this letter too 
long, and I do not care to enter into discussions with a 
personal friend on matters which he has so much at heart. 
Moreover, I wish to preserve an entirely judicial, and 
not controversial frame of mind on all that relates to 
Canadian matters. ... I have also always declared a 
very cordial dislike of Puritanism. I recognize some 
most respectable and valuable qualities in the settlers of 
New England, but do not think them or their system 
to be praised without great qualifications; and I would 
not spare criticism if I had to write about them. . . . 
If you have mistaken my views, I could also point out a 
good many other mistakes in your article. You say that 
I see Canadian defects through a microscope, and merits 
through a diminishing glass. The truth is, I have sup- 
pressed a considerable number of statements and observa- 
tions because I thought that, while they would give pain, 
they were not absolutely necessary to the illustration of 
the subject; but I have invariably given every favorable 
testimony I could find in any authentic quarter; and 
after I had finished the volume I made careful search in 
Eerland and Garneau to see if they had discovered any- 
thing which had escaped me. The materials of Canadian 
history, it is true, proceed almost entirely from the pens 
of persons born and bred in France — for the Canadians 
themselves wrote very little indeed, but only a very few 
of these persons wrote in an adverse spirit. Wherever 
it was possible, I have used their own language. . . . 
In exhibiting the different workings of two political 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 207 

systems, it was necessary to make comparisons which seem 
invidious; but these comparisons are not, as you say, 
continual; for they are confined to three or four pages 
at the end of the book, and the points of military effi- 
ciency on which the system of authority had advantages 
are fully exhibited. ... I am well on in the story of 
Frontenac, whose good and bad traits I shall endeavor, 
after my custom, to exhibit clearly. Perhaps, when you 
read what I have written, you will not think me so 
partial after all." 

This passage enables us to put our finger on one 
of the most important qualities of Parkman's char- 
acter and work. Although by nature more given to 
strictures than laudation, he was most distinctly a 
kindly spirit in his life and his writings. Despite 
the absence of sentiment from his pages, which yet 
deal so much with experiences calling for pity, this 
guide lays on the reader a silent hand that is humane 
and gentle. Then again, his humor, though critical 
and incisive, is always kind, having generally a 
moral aim, as again^ a lack of manliness, common- 
sense, freedom, or honesty. And in spite of their 
long lists of hardships and tortures, his books are all 
cheerful in tone. 

But to return to his love of truth, Parkman's 
impartiality in historical work is shown in two broad 
topics that of necessity run through many of his 
volumes : Catholicism and Feudalism. Romanism 
in particular, taking it simply as a system of practi- 
cal morality, roused his strongest antipathy by many 



208 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

of its fundamental principles in education and daily 
conduct; but however little Parkman cared about 
the religious life, he esteemed too highly deep feel- 
ing of some kind as the motive force of character, 
to treat lightly the sincere practice of any religion. 
He never failed to appreciate devotion to duty, and 
victories of the conscience. It was a lofty view of 
life and character, quite as much as tlie impartiality 
of the historian, that led him to set forth the heroic 
labors and martyrdoms of the early Missionaries of 
Canada. He said : 

"But when we see them, in the gloomy February of 
1637, and the gloomier months that followed, toiling on 
foot from one infected town to another, wading through 
the sodden snow, under the bare and dripping forests, 
drenched with incessant rains, till they descried at length 
through the storm the clustered dwellings of some bar- 
barous hamlet, — when we see them entering, one after 
another, these wretched abodes of misery and darkness, 
and all for one sole end, the baptism of the sick and 
dying, we may smile at the futility of the object, but 
we must needs admire the self-sacrificing zeal with which 
it was pursued. 

" Yet withal a fervor more intense, a self-abnegation 
more comj)lete, a self-devotion more constant and endur- 
ing, will scarcely find its record on the page of human 
history." ^ 

His work reflects his equipoise in another matter. 
Although exceedingly fond of New England, he 

1 The Jesuits, Chapter VIII. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 209 

did not spare the lethargy and factiousness of the 
English colonists ; and it is noticeable that he seldom 
went a step out of his way to show the redeeming 
virtues of his own people. 

His work is characteristic also by the naturalness 
and simplicity of his conceptions. His elemental 
temperament led him to keep the reader as much as 
possible out-of-doors, amid the space, air, and freedom 
of primeval nature. He conducted his narratives 
with the same quick, firm step he had in walking; 
his keen perceptions and good memory enabled him 
to seize a multitude of details along the way; but 
he never lost the trail, or failed to subordinate 
details to the general effect. Such rapidity of move- 
ment is impossible to a mind unable to see things in 
broad masses. 

The same is true of his treatment of character. 
He cared little for the underhand elements of his- 
tory — the complexities of diplomacy, petty per- 
sonal matters, meanness of motives and conduct 
received small development under his hand. What- 
ever men and events may have been in their depths, 
his conception and presentation of them were frank, 
strong, and simple. Truly fortunate was he to find 
in his theme so much that was simple and manly. 
Probably he would not have done so well in writing 
a history of Europe, entangled in a complex web of 
many lines of interest and jostled at every turn by 
crowding peoples of diverse origins and destinies. 
He needed just what he had, — the stories of a few 

14 



210 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

single-minded heroes leading small bodies of men 
through the wide spaces of the wilderness, and the 
deeper, though still simple history of two opposing 
systems of colonization and national growth. 

As the production of a " passionate Puritan," ^ his 
work bears in itself the fire and the reserve of his 
dual nature. He often wished to get rid of the re- 
pressive force that held him down. In this subter- 
ranean warfare of his nature, Puritanism was nearly 
always the victor. While willing to expand consid- 
erably a description of the scenic setting of an 
incident, he was entirely unable to express his sym- 

1 This happy phrase comes from the following poem by his 
daughter, Mrs. J. T. Coolidge, Jr. 

To F, P. 

Stoic and ■warrior, through the din of strife 
Thy path was hewn with strength of iron will. 
No fear could stay thy dauntless course through life, 
Nor destiny's decrees thy purpose Idll. 
Straight to the mark with head erect and free. 
Enduring all, determined to attain, 
Nor count the cost ; thy strong vitality 
Transfigured pain to power, and loss to gain. 
When the long fight was fought, the laurel wreath 
Of high success was thine, — faithful to death. 

Passionate Puritan, master of thy might. 

The faint of heart grew strong in seeing thee ; 

A dominant idea the leading light 

And talisman that gave thee victory. 

Deep in thyself was force of burning fire 

That nerve must hold until the prize he won; 

Fearlessly guiding it to thy desire 

Thy hand drove on the chariot of the sun 

Until the gates flew wide, and on thy vision 

Burst light of conqueror's calm in Fields Elysian. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN^ IN HIS WORKS 211 

pathy for a victim tortured to death, or to cast over 
an event the halo of a poetic or moral sentiment. 
This reserve showed itself so strongly in " Pontiac," 
written in the exuberant and expansive period of 
life, as to call forth the following letter from his 
mentor, Professor Sparks. After referring to the 
atrocious acts of the Paxton men he says : 

"Altho you relate events in the true spirit of calm- 
ness and justice, yet I am not sure but a word or two of 
indignation, now and then, at such unnatural and inhuman 
developments of the inner man would be expected from 
an historian who enters deeply into the merits of his 
subject." ^ 

Parkman was Inevitably in his work what he was 
in his temperament, — Puritan, Spartan, and Stoic 
all in one. We are constantly impressed by his 
Puritan economy of praise. Few achievements or 
characters call out any expression of admiration, 
although his pages glow with their strong diction 
and rapid movement. Although as a man he suf- 
fered under the strain of these opposite qualities, as a 
historian he found in them a large part of his success. 

His manner under criticism was naturally that of 
a strong and independent soul standing on solid 
ground, and loving a fight. He wrote : " I believe 
that, when I feel confident in my position, I am not 
very sensitive to criticism." ^ But he had no fond- 

1 Letter written in 1850. 

2 To Abbe Casgrain, May 23, 1873. 



212 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN" 

ness for polemical and metaphysical contentions ; 
he was decisive rather than argumentative. Early 
in life he formed liis opinions on nearly all the topics 
he afterwards had occasion to handle, and he held to 
these views with great firmness. His self-defences 
consisted chiefly of a presentation of facts, rather 
than any consideration of principles and theories. 
Once he had given his opinion he was apt to drop 
the subject, or listen to his opponent in silence. 
Thanks to thoroughness and the need of economiz- 
ing his strength and sight, he seldom felt obliged to 
take up his pen in self-defence ; but when he did, he 
left nothing to be desired in the way of firm thought 
and incisive expression. In a few papers he has given 
us a glimpse or two of this side of his nature. 

For what Parkman thought of other historians we 
have very little data. It is said that he admired 
Prescott when in college, yet no record of this influ- 
ence or of any other is extant. Later liis reading was 
for the most part determined by the need of relaxation ; 
so that he knew little history outside his own special 
field. Unfortunately, but few of his passing remarks 
on historians have been preserved. We have already 
given his opinion of Garneau, as having the philo- 
sophical manner without the matter , also his vigor- 
ous censure of Bancroft for estimating too highly the 
dignity of liistory, and avoiding the use of homely 
and trifling incidents. He considered De Gasp^'s 
" Anciens Canadiens " an " admirable picture of life 
and manners, one of the chief attractions of which is 



PAEKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 213 

its manifest truth." ^ Occasionally he wrote a short 
review of historical works concerning the Indians, 
such as Stone's " Red Jacket." Rameau, however, in 
presenting the Roman Catholic view of the old re- 
gime in Canada, called forth a review that contains 
several characteristic passages. 

"He is the bravest of generalizers ; snatches at a de- 
tached fact and spreads it over as much ground as his 
theories require. . . . His book is a curious example of the 
manner in which a man of confused brain and weak judg- 
ment, eager to see things in his own way, will distort 
some facts, overlook others, magnify others that are tri- 
fling into gigantic proportion, and all with no apparent 
intention to deceive anybody." ^ 

But these papers are a very inadequate gratifica- 
tion of the general desire to know the opinions of an 
expert. Parkman's inability to read much is perhaps 
to be regretted here more than anywhere else ; since 
his originality and independence would have made 
his criticism most valuable. 

Despite the fact that a Puritanic economy of praise 
held a mask before his sympathies, we may yet learn 
something personal from a view of his gallery of his- 
torical portraits. His self-revelations, however, must 
be looked for more in his style and treatment than in 
any evident signs of sympathy. At most we can now 
and then catch a confidential word to some of his 
heroes as they march along. 

1 Letter to Abbe Casgrain, June 3, 1871. 

2 Eeview of Une Colonie F€odale. — The Nation, No. 6-52. 



214 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

The strong and effective, in character as well as in 
nature and language, attracted him. He adhered 
conscientiously to facts in portraiture, indulging in 
no hazardous or imaginative touches, however invit- 
ing they might be for the sake of artistic symmetry 
and completeness. His energy and imagination, con- 
centrated on the ideal world of his solitary study, 
brought him to look upon his characters as real 
people ; he thus attained much of the novelist's or 
dramatist's vividness of conception. The range of 
his knowledge of men and life is shown by the vari- 
ety of classes handled. He seized with certainty the 
salient traits of men and women, courtiers and sav- 
ages, priests and politicians, seigniors and peasants, 
nuns and coureurs cle hois. Here by sympathy, there 
by antipathy, more often still by simply a keen intel- 
lectual comprehension, he reached in the long years 
of slow work and solitary meditation very close rela- 
tions with his characters. The chief wonder is that 
in this prolonged intimacy he should have given so 
little of himself. 

Parkman's methods in portraiture were happily 
varied according to his materials and in view of the 
literary contrasts and effects he wished to produce. 
Now the chief traits of a man would be given in a 
a few lines ; then built up by successive touches 
brought in as the course of events required; or 
again the antecedents and education of a person 
would be set forth in a more or less biographical 
sketch. Or perhaps a man's own contemporaries 



PARKMAN- AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 215 

were allowed to testify on all sides as to his char- 
acter and conduct, thus reassuring the reader by the 
most unquestionable impartiality. Parkman's love 
of unity and effectiveness received the highest grati- 
fication whenever he found a figure that could be 
justly used as the centre of interest for grouping the 
men and events of an epoch. La Salle and Fronte- 
nac were thus favorite subjects with him, while " A 
,Half Century" repelled him by its lack of a hero 
and a controlling purpose. His love of action made 
him fond of the dramatic in history : he liked a char- 
acter to portray himself by his acts. This method, I 
think, was his first choice whenever proportion and 
material allowed of its employment. 

Parkman's portraits are further interesting as a 
record of his growth. In the earlier works their 
firmness of treatment is not free from a certain 
hardness. Though living and effective, these por- 
traits generally give only the external forces that are 
made manifest in a public career: they show keen- 
ness of perception more than sympathy. But suffer- 
ing, friendships, years of hard work, and success at 
last, could not fail to mellow a nature so capable of 
culture. In liis later volumes Parkman shows more 
interest in the emotional and spiritual forces of 
character — as may be seen in his describing the 
meanness of Braddock towards women, Montcalm's 
affectionate and domestic qualities, and the filial and 
poetic sentiment that graced the pathetic figure of 
Wolfe. 



216 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

If I were restricted to one word that should de- 
scribe both the life and the character of Parkman, 
that word would be heroic. In following out the 
harmony of his character with his theme, and seeking 
for reflections of that character in his works, I was 
therefore delighted to meet with the following pas- 
sage in Professor Fiske's " Introductory Essay " 
(p. xxxv) : 

''In all the history of the American continent, no 
names stand higher than some of the French names. 
For courage, for fortitude and high resolve, for sagacious 
leadership, statesmanlike wisdom, unswerving integrity, 
devoted loyalty, for all the qualities which make life 
heroic, we may learn lessons innumerable from the noble 
Frenchmen who throng in Mr. Parkman's pages." 

If ever an artist was blessed with a congenial sub- 
ject, it was Parkman, And this harmony was espe- 
cially close in the most central and important element 
— the humanity, the life and character connected 
with his theme. He was continually meeting some 
trait or experience of his own in following his peo- 
ple; and in one or two cases he stood singularly 
close to his heroes. 

Parkman's imaginative sympathy, the very heart of 
the artist, deserves a word for its relations to his por- 
traits. Inevitably allied to the human sympathy 
from which it springs, it followed the same growth, 
from its externality in youth and middle life to a 
deeper insight in his maturity. True, frank, and per- 
sistent though he was in friendship, his faculties and 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 217 

sympatliies were unable to reach, the spiritual elements 
of life and character. In his humanities as in his rela- 
tions with nature, he was true to himself, — never 
affecting sentiments not clearly felt by him. In his 
diaries, for example, he seems to have viewed life as 
a pageant, men and women not within the circle of 
liis friendship being mere persons in a procession. In 
training himself for observation and description, he 
was satisfied with noting only the external, material 
facts of the show, not even attempting to read the 
story of intimate experience in any person, class, or 
nation, nor to penetrate into the recesses of character. 
But those things that his organization enabled him to 
perceive he saw very clearly, and devoted his atten- 
tion to them with his usual concentration and energy. 
We shall see other effects of his specialized sympathy 
in his miscellaneous papers on public questions. 

His treatment of the Indian is another illustration 
of this point. It is so exceedingly graphic and impres- 
sive as to carry the general reader along in complete 
absorption. Yet it has found critics among philan- 
thropic students of to-day who have the advantages 
of more recent discoveries and methods. They say 
that his treatment lacks sympathy, as well as a 
knowledge of the deeper interests connected with that 
peculiar race of men. Wliile they admire his work 
for its thoroughness and for its remarkable charm of 
picturesqueness, they are inclined to treat lightly 
opinions formed from the superficial works of the 
Jesuits and other early writers, or on the traditions 



218 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

of New England derived from the political economy 
of Miles Standish, and on the experience of border 
settlers who had suffered from Indian cruelty and re- 
venge. These critics say that when Parkman went 
west to see for himself, he confirmed these opinions 
by a sojourn of only a few months with a band of 
Sioux, during which time suspicion rather than sym- 
pathy ruled the intercourse, rendering it impossible 
for him to penetrate beneath the surface ; and that as 
his infirmities prevented him from closely following 
subsequent studies, his work must be regarded as 
the most accurate and graphic picture of the pag- 
eantry alone, the bare external life and character of 
men in the stone age. On the other hand, many 
people, especially frontiersmen, who consider modern 
philosophic lines of appreciation as visionaiy, hold 
to the simpler conceptions of Parkman as the true, 
practical, and sufficient portrayal of the Indian. 

The only point that concerns us here is the sig- 
nificance of his study as a revelation of his own 
personality. At the time of his investigations the 
science of ethnology had not yet been even named ; 
much less had the doctrine of evolution been applied 
to the study of it. No one then dreamed of studying 
the tribal life of Indians as a connecting link between 
the prehistoric epoch and the earliest recorded period 
of civilization. But even had these ideas been in 
force, it seems doubtful that Parkman would have 
followed them, having no taste for such philosophical 
studies, or for psychological phenomena in traditions, 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 219 

ceremonies, and language. He described just what 
he most liked to observe — the pageantry of wild life 
and the manifest, effective traits of Indian character. 
He could not decorate his accurate work with vision- 
ary savages; he could use neither the romance of 
Cooper nor the abstractions of ethnological specula- 
tion. He followed his own bent for realism. 

In his solitary study Parkman dwelt with a com- 
pany very real to his imagination. Some of them he 
obviously hated ; he treated others in his reserved way 
as friends ; and one he seems to have regarded almost 
as a brother. In looking at his gallery of portraits, it 
would seem as if fate had selected the leaders of New 
France with special reference to her future historian. 
Except a few men and women of the soft and saintly 
type, the persons in that history were generally of 
heroic temper ; and even the exceptions often came 
within the range of his feeling by their heroic labors 
and hardships. The men who left luxurious France 
to face the savagery of early America, had to have a 
certain measure of manliness. But Parkman presents 
his heroes as he spoke of his friends in real life — 
without praise in even the soberest terms. A sense 
of sympathy and comprehension are conveyed by the 
simple noting of facts ; or some close, forcible phrase, 
giving the motive or quality of character or conduct, 
seiwes for explicit appreciation. Thus when Daulac 
took Parkman with him on his heroic expedition to 
the Long Sault, the latter opened his own heart in 
saying : " The enthusiasm of honor, the enthusiasm 



220 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

of adventure, and the enthusiasm of faith were its 
motive forces."^ 

I do not ignore the slightness of the evidence con- 
tained in such historical facts and obvious appreci- 
ations taken as autobiographic confessions, and I am 
aware that to those who have never known Parkman 
personally, this evidence will have little value. But 
to those who knew the man, these slight signs may- 
be not unwelcome additions to the interest felt in his 
works. The chivalrous Champlain, the brave and 
loyal Tonty, the lion-hearted Brdbceuf, and many 
others, appealed to his own natural parts ; and he 
unconsciously responded in his treatment. His an- 
tipathies were equally stimulated by Menendez, 
Marie de M^dicis, and Pompadour. Nothing struck 
fire from his steel more quickly than the assumptions 
of the church in temporal affairs. His animation 
of feeling on this point is frequently met in Fron- 
tenac's contests with the Jesuits and with Bishops 
Laval and Saint Valier. Dearly did he love a fight, 
and a good fighter; witness his lengthy account of 
Frederick the Great's single-handed struggle with all 
Europe, — a struggle not closely related to the war in 
America. As a minor figure that appealed to the same 
martial taste, take Rogers the Ranger, who captured 
Parkman's youthful enthusiasm and led him to follow 
the Ranger's trails about Lake George and Lake Cham- 
plain, and to write the only poem he ever published.^ 

His detestation of duplicity may be seen in his 

1 Old Regime, p. 123. ^ gee Appendix. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 221 

treatment of Laloutre and other Indian-agent mis- 
sionaries, as well as of many ecclesiastical poli- 
ticians. Another example is his presentation of that 
curious compound of feminine wiles and Roman 
Catholic morality, Madame de la Peltrie.^ On the 
other hand, he gave himself out with equal distinct- 
ness in dealing with the admirable personalities of 
his group. The portrait of that strong woman, Marie 
de rincarnation, shows his ready appreciation of 
power and native nobility. Perhaps his nearest ap- 
proach to sentiment and pathos is the account of 
Jogues mourning for his murdered companion Gar- 
uier; yet this impression is conveyed only by the 
facts of the incident. An exceptional estimation 
of poetic beauty in character is shown in the por- 
trait of Marquette : ^ 

"He was a devout votary of the Virgin Mary, who, 
imaged to his mind in shapes of the most transcendent 
loveliness with which the pencil of human genius has ever 
informed the canvas, was to him the object of an adoration 
not unmingled with a sentiment of chivalrous devotion. 
The longings of a sensitive heart, divorced from earth, 
sought solace in the skies. A subtile element of romance 
was blended with the fervor of his worship, and hung like 
an illumined cloud over the harsh and hard realities of his 
daily lot. Kindled by the smile of his celestial mistress, 
his gentle and noble nature knew no fear. For her he 
burned to dare and to suffer, discover new lands, and con- 
quer new realms to her sway." 

1 P. 316. 2 La Salle, p. 50. 



222 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

But within the wide circle of these friends of 
second degree, there was a small group of men who 
drew him into still closer sympathy. Lord Howe, 
the cultured gentleman and "complete model of 
military virtue," was a figure that Parkman took by 
the hand. Under similar circumstances he himself 
would have shown the same earnestness and practical 
wisdom that Howe displayed in serving under Rogers 
to study the needs of men fighting in the wilderness, 
and in reorganizing the service to suit these condi- 
tions. Pitt, in spite of certain weaknesses, also drew 
forth some sympathetic words ; Parkman could not 
stand aloof from the gifted, ambitious, incorruptible 
patriot, the commanding and inspiring statesman who 
was leading England to success in all quarters of the 
globe. 

Wolfe was another of his affinities. Wolfe's por- 
trait contains many touches that are surprisingly true 
of Parkman in his early manhood ; and these resem- 
blances would have been still more striking had the 
Instorian's martial instincts been brought to light by 
a military career. For example : ^ 

''Wolfe was a delicate and sensitive child, but an im- 
petuous and somewhat headstrong youth who from child- 
hood had dreamed of the army and the wars, and who had 
showed along with a painstaking assiduity a precocious 
faculty for commanding men. . . . Always ardent, al- 
ways diligent, and constant in military duty. He made 
friends readily and kept them, and was usually a pleasant 

1 Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. ii. p. 184. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 223 

companion, tliougli subject to sallies of imperious irrita- 
bility, wliicli occasionally broke through his strong sense of 
good breeding. For this his susceptible constitution was 
largely answerable. ... In spite of his impatient out- 
bursts, the oflScers whom he had commaoded remained 
attached to him for life, and in spite of his rigorous 
discipline, he was beloved by his soldiers. Frankness, 
directness, essential good feeling, and a high integrity 
atoned for all his faults. In his own view, as expressed 
to his mother, he was a person of very moderate abilities, 
aided by more than usual diligence ; but this modest 
judgment of himself by no means deprived him of self- 
confidence, nor, in time of need, of self-assertion. He 
delighted in every kind of hardihood : and in his con- 
tempt for effeminacy, once said to his mother : * Better 
be a savage of some use than a gentle, amorous puppy, 
obnoxious to all the world.' He was far from despising 
fame, but the controlling principles of his life were duty 
to his country and his profession, loyalty to the King, 
and fidelity to his own ideal of the perfect soldier. To 
the parent who was the confidant of his most intimate 
thoughts, he said : ' All that I wish for myself is that I 
may at all times be ready and firm to meet that fate we 
cannot shun, and to die gracefully and properly when the 
hour comes.' Never was wish more signally fulfilled. 
And again he tells her : ' My utmost desire and ambition 
is to look steadily upon danger.' And his desire was 
accomplished. His intrepidity was comj^lete. No form 
of death had power to daunt him. Once and again when 
bound on some deadly enterprise of war, he calmly counts 
the chances'.whether or not he can compel his feeble body 
to bear him on till the work is done. A frame so deli- 



224 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

cately strung could not have been insensible to danger ; 
but forgetfulness of self, and the absorption of every 
faculty in the object before him, shut out the sense of 
fear. He seems always to have been at his best in the 
thick of battle ; most complete in his mastery over him- 
self and over others." 

Parkman iu his darkened study, combating his 
infirmities and difficulties, bore himself as Wolfe did 
in sailing for Quebec : 

"■ In a few hours the whole squadron was at sea, the 
transports, the frigates, and the great line of battleships 
with their ponderous armament and their freight of rude 
humanity, armed and trained for destruction ; while on 
the heaving deck of the 'Neptune,' wretched with seasick- 
ness and racked with pain, stood the gallant invalid who 
was master of it all." 

Frontenac is another member of his inner circle of 
friends, but one whose closeness did not depend 
chiefly on resemblances to Parlanan, While some of 
their most fundamental traits were found in both, 
many of the Frenchman's peculiarities were quite 
foreign to the self-restrained Puritan. Frontenac 
held his place by a variety of circumstances. Parkman 
said : ^ " The history of New France is a great and 
significant drama, enacted among untamed forests, 
with a distant gleam of courtly splendors and the 
regal pomp of Versailles." The volume " Frontenac 
and New France under Louis XIV." is the climax 
of this drama, and its denouement is " Montcalm and 

1 Preface to Frontenac. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 225 

Wolfe." Count Froutenac was thus a most fortu- 
nate find for the historian, being in true perspective 
the central figure of the whole work. They were 
closely related by several personal traits, — a frank 
manner, clear and decisive speech, martial tastes, in- 
dependence, keenness and fire, love of action, master- 
ful energy, and strength of will. Even Frontenac's 
violent outbursts in connection with the Jesuits were 
in accord with Parkman's controlled impetuosity. 
The historian could not but enjoy such a man in 
such surroundings, a man of whom he said: "A 
more remarkable figure in its bold and salient indi- 
^dduality and sharply marked light and shade is no- 
where seen in American history." ^ Then again 
Frontenac gathered about him topics that enlisted 
his liveliest interest, — such as the conflicts of church 
and state, and the vast plans that Frontenac imposed 
as the future policy of France in America. Frontenac 
may be regarded as Parkman's masterpiece in por- 
traiture. 

But he had a still more intimate friend. La Salle, 
whose character and labors appealed with exceptional 
force to his sympathies, and drew out of him auto- 
biographic touches of the most intimate kind, was 
almost a brother. In La Salle he found his own manly 
character matched, and inevitably warmed to the man 
who had shown such courage, hardihood, and strength 
in the wilderness, who pursued with so much deter- 
mination and energy plans of the greatest importance. 

* Frontenac, p. 436. 
15 



226 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

Through the sympathy born of these and other essen- 
tial similarities, Parkman seems often to have spoken 
of himself in describing La Salle; and this opinion 
is further sustained both by our knowledge of the 
former's traits and by the fervor, insight, and sure- 
ness of touch shown in his chapter on the explorer's 
character. Take, for example, these temperamental 
traits of the young La Salle : 

''The cravings of a deep ambition, the hunger of an 
insatiable intellect, the intense longing for action and 
achievement, subdued in him all other passions. ... A 
youth whose calm exterior hid an inexhaustible fund of 
pride, whose inflexible purposes, nursed in secret, the 
confessional and the ' manifestations of conscience ' could 
hardly drag to light ; whose strong personality would not 
yield to the shaping hand, and who by a necessity of his 
nature, could obey no initiative but his own, was not after 
the model that Loyola had commended to his followers. A 
young man in whom the fire of youth glowed not the less 
ardently for the veil of reserve that covered it ; who would 
shrink from no danger, but would not court it in bravado ; 
and who would cling with an invincible tenacity of grip 
to any purpose which he might espouse."^ 

Nor could Parkman be more autobiographic than in 
saying : 

''The staple of La Salle's character, as his life will 
attest, was an invincible determination of purpose, which 
set at naught all risks and all sufferings." ^ 

Aside from the difference of Parkman's ultimate suc- 
cess and La Salle's failure, the following passage 

1 La Salle, p. 3. « jud., p. 17. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 227 

again is true of Parkman, not only as to his personal 
history in regard to labor, risk, and fortitude, but also 
as regards his spirit, at least in the early and middle 
epochs of his career: 

" He had staked all, and all had seemingly been lost. 
In stern and relentless effort, he had touched the limits of 
human endurance, and the harvest of his toil was disap- 
pointment, disaster, impending ruin. The shattered fabric 
of his enterprise was prostrate in the dust. His friends 
desponded; his foes were blatant and exultant. Did he 
bend before the storm? No human eye could pierce the 
depths of his reserved and haughty nature ; but the sur- 
face was calm, and no sign betrayed a shaken resolve or 
an altered purpose. Where weaker men would have 
abandoned all in despairing apathy, he turned anew to his 
work with the same vigor and the same apparent confi- 
dence as if borne on the full tide of success." ^ 

And later: 

"He had no thought but to grapple with adversity, and 
out of the fragments of his ruin to build up the fabric of 
success." 

Even La Salle's reserve and pride, marred by cold- 
ness and irritating hauteur, were vi^ell within Park- 
man's comprehension; for, possessing the former 
traits, he escaped the latter only through the oppos- 
ing force of frankness and geniality. He felt keenly 
for La Salle in the isolation that must always result 
from such a temperament: 

1 La Salle, p. 188. 



228 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

''We have seen La Salle in his acts. Few men knew 
him, even of those who saw him most. Reserved and 
self-contained ... he was a sealed book to those about 
him. His daring energy and endurance were patent to 
all; but the motive forces that urged him, and the influ- 
ences that wrought beneath the surface of his character, 
were hidden where few eyes could pierce." ^ 

Parkman also appeal's to say a word in his own defence 
when recognizing in La Salle " an incapacity to ex- 
press, and much more to simulate feeling, — a trait 
sometimes seen in those with whom feeling is most 
deep. "2 Still other passages are both biographic 
and autobiographic: 

" He was the hero, not of a principle nor of a faith, but 
simply of a fixed idea and a determined j)urpose. As 
often happens with concentrated and energetic natures, his 
purpose was to him a passion and an inspiration; and he 
clung to it with a certain fanaticism of devotion." ^ 

Again : 

" Such was the indomitable nature of this man, whom 
no peril could deter, and no failure discourage. So he 
remained to the end, battling against destiny with the 
same unflinching mettle. Fate hounded him to death, 
but could not shake his courage ... La Salle was a 
grand type of incarnate energy and will."^ 

These words also would seem to spring from Park- 
man's own experience: 

1 La Salle, p. 307. « Ibid., p. 319. 

8 Ibid., p. 406. * Ibid., p. 446. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 229 

"All that appears to the eye is his intrepid conflict 
with obstacles without, but this, perhaps, was no more 
arduous than the invisible and silent strife of a nature at 
war with itself; the pride, aspiration and bold energy 
that lay at the base of his character battling against the 
superficial weakness that mortified and angered him. In 
such a man, the effect of such an infirmity is to concen- 
trate and intensify the force within." ^ 

He recognized in La Salle his own central fire, — a 
" deep enthusiasm of character which may be read in 
his life, but to which he rarely allowed the faintest 
expression." ^ And finally, he could not have painted 
himself with more striking veracity, in at least the 
harder periods of his life, than in this summary : 

''Cavalier de la Salle stands in history like a statue 
cast in iron ; but his own unwilling pen betrays the man 
and reveals in the stern, sad figure an object of human 
interest and pity." ^ 

Parkman's success in dealing with many of his 
personages thus sprang from intimate personal sym- 
pathy with them and a knowledge of himself. It is 
very doubtful that any other historical writings pre- 
sent such versatility of acute interest and clear 
comprehension of character. 

3. The sources of Parkman's power are deeply 
interesting to the student of literature and history. 
First of all, there is the richness of the theme itself, 

1 La Salle, p. 320. 2 /jj j.^ p. 314. 

8 Ibid., p. 320. 



230 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

freely offering vivid pictures, dramatic events, and 
striking characters. Also it has the freshness of 
originality, in the strictest sense: no other epoch of 
history takes us so far back towards our origin, by 
furnishing such graphic accounts of the life and 
character of man in the stone age, or by the experi- 
ences of civilized men in the wilderness. But the 
broadest material distinction that marks his work is 
its realism. Both the man and his books are felt to 
be solid. His work is built of facts as a palace of 
dressed stones, which, without mortar, hold them- 
selves together and form a fair edifice. In por- 
traiture his sincerity forbade him to pass beyond 
appreciations that were natural to his organization, or 
to put in any touches not justified by good evidence. 
Keeping his eye on thje actual, and on broad, posi- 
tive, effective traits and motives, he avoided the 
weakness of possible contradictions in details, and 
made his men and women consistent, vital, and full 
of action. But in this exceptional devotion to the 
matter, he never lost sight of the spirit and general 
effect. A fact was simply a stone in his edifice, and 
as such, kept subordinate to the general plan. The 
singular combination of an eye for the picturesque 
with a practical, matter-of-fact mind enabled him to 
appreciate both detail and mass. Thus he enjoyed an 
advantage that subsequent historians can hardly hope 
to have, — even when the sciences of ethnology and 
psychology shall have made clearer the permanent 
and the transient in history, and connected more 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 231 

closely the present with the past. Professor Fiske 
in his "Introductory Essay" (p. xxiii) presents this 
excellent summary of the effectiveness of Mr. Park- 
man's realism: 

"This elaborateness of preparation had its share in pro- 
ducing the intense vividness of Mr. Parkman's descrip- 
tions. Profusion of detail makes them seem like the 
accounts of an eye-witness. The realism is so strong that 
the author seems to have come in person fresh from the 
scenes he described, with the smoke of the battle hovering 
about him, and its fierce light glowing in his eyes. 
Such realism is usually the prerogative of the novelist 
rather than of the historian." 

But all these basic realistic elements were merely 
the body that needed the breath of life ; we must pen- 
etrate to the more intimate elements of personality if 
we would understand the sources of his power. We 
meet at once his ardent nature and the supernormal 
energy by which his work profited and his body 
suffered. He j-an his race on a fiery steed, revelling 
in the freedom and swiftness of motion over solid 
ground. This energy, felt everywhere in his work, 
despite the moderation and dignity necessary to his- 
torical writing, animates the reader much as music 
does, independently of specific aims; being keenly 
alive, the bare facts give him vivid impressions, 
which may be largely determined by his own know- 
ledge and powers of sympathy. 

Another central and permeating force, perhaps the 



232 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

very soul of all this body of facts and fire, was his 
chivalrous spirit. What we might call a matter- 
of-fact imagination was exalted by intense love of 
romance. In possessing these traits, each in a high 
degree, he was blessed with two of the most effective 
forces of the historian. Although his histories are 
peculiarly American, largely scientific in method, and 
modern in interests, their power over the reader 
depends very much on the mediaeval spirit of the 
theme and of the writer. Parkman's romantic turn 
was not towards the mystical and ideal, but towards 
the adventurous, the courageous, the picturesque. 
Take for example his description of the founding of 
Montreal :i 

*^ Maisonneuve sprang ashore, and fell on his knees. 
His followers imitated his example ; and all joined their 
voices in enthusiastic songs of thanksgiving. Tents, bag- 
gage, arms, and stores were landed. An altar was raised 
on a pleasant spot near at hand ; and Mademoiselle 
Mance, with Madame de la Peltrie, aided by her servant, 
Charlotte Barr^, decorated it with a taste which was the 
admiration of the beholders. Now all the company 
gathered before the shrine. Here stood Vimont, in the 
rich vestments of his office. Here were the two ladies 
with their servant Montmagny, no very willing spectator; 
and Maisonneuve, a warlike figure, erect and tall, Lis men 
clustering around him, — soldiers, sailors, artisans, and 
laborers, — all alike soldiers at need. They kneeled in 
reverent silence as the Host was raised aloft ; and when 
the rite was over, the priest turned and addressed them : 
1 The Jesuits, ^.20S. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WOEKS 233 

" ' You are a grain of mustard seed that shall rise and 
grow till its branches overshadow the earth. You are few, 
but your work is the work of God. His smile is on you, 
and your children shall fill the land.' 

' ' The afternoon waned ; the sun sank behind the west- 
ern forest, and twilight came on. Fireflies were twinkling 
over the darkened meadow. They caught them, tied them 
with thread into shining festoons, and hung them before 
the altar where the Host remained exposed. Then they 
pitched their tents, lighted their bivouac fires, stationed 
their guards, and lay down to rest. Such was the birth- 
night of Montreal." 

This passage closes with the question: "Is this 
true history, or a romance of Christian chivalry? 
It is both." 

As a summary of his entire work and its intimate 
relation to himself, this remarkable picture may stand 
alone : 

" The Trench Dominion is a memory of the past ; and 
when we evoke its departed shades, they rise upon us 
from their graves in strange romantic guise. Again their 
ghostly campfires seem to burn, and the fitful light is cast 
around on lord and vassal, and black-robed priest, min- 
gled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close 
fellowship on the same stern errand. A boundless vision 
grows upon us ; an untamed continent ; vast wastes of 
forest verdure ; mountains silent in primeval sleep ; river, 
lake, and glimmering pool ; wilderness oceans mingling 
with the sky. Such was the domain which France con- 
quered for civilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the 



234 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

shade of its forests, priestly vestments in its dens and 
fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique 
learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here 
spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage 
hordes with a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before 
the direst shapes of death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs 
to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here, with their 
dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of 
toil." 1 

We have been looking into Parkman's books not 
so much with the purpose of discussing them as lit- 
erature or history, as aiming to find in his pages 
reflections of his nature. As the exactness of these 
reflections depends on the accordance of the artist's 
inmost being with his subject, training, and experi- 
ence, we have incidentally searched for these har- 
monies. But this study, of fundamental importance in 
the biography of any creator, has been too superficial 
to give much satisfaction. We are still a long way 
from any real knowledge of the psychological facts 
and principles required for good biography. 

Yet in glancing back at his career we cannot fail 
to get some valuable lessons. Nature had endowed 
him with good though not wonderful intellectual 
powers ; but she had been lavish in the manly gifts of 
energy, common sense, will, persistence, and courage. 
Ambition drove his mind and body — strangely com- 
pounded of weakness and strength — through the 
most beneficial intellectual and moral discipline, and 

^ Pioneers, p. xii. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 235 

pushed on his growth to full maturity. Unavowedly 
he has described his own career in the passage placed 
on the title-page of this memoir. Even among artists 
who have been financially as independent as he, few 
if any, have directed their lives and labors so closely 
in accord with their interior forces. He allowed none 
of the usual distractions of life to interfere with him. 
Neither physical weakness, personal tastes or habits, 
outward pleasures, domestic cares, counsel of friends, 
changes of aim or method, nor the influence of criti- 
cism and public opinion, had any effect on this man 
of clear vision and iron will. 

Parkman's highest wisdom lay in his perception of 
the dangers lurking in the pursuit of technique. He 
knew how readily the mind becomes enamoured of the 
hand; how rarely the artist possesses breadth and 
strength enough to resist the fascination, so that only 
the very greatest escape blindness to the fundamen- 
tal human interests of art; he saw that the most 
painful aberrations of judgment, the worst of mis- 
takes in subject and treatment as related to vital 
interests, are to be found in works of great technical 
excellence. Thus he feared the atmosphere of the 
study, warned students against "emasculate scholar- 
ship," and desired to keep himself broad and sane by 
all possible contact with the world. 

It was a great pleasure to observe his quiet but pro- 
found happiness in his own success, as an offset to the 
unfortunate side of his life. If this Spartan at times 
wished for death as a relief from suffering, he received 



236 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

at last a double crown, — one for his heroic endurance 
and another for his productions. 

External success answered generously to his sacri- 
fices. It is true that for a long time his financial 
profits were far short of a reasonable recompense for 
his heavy outlays of money and labor; but in other 
ways his reward was great. The most prudent and 
competent critics recognized him as a writer of 
accuracy, vivid imagination, cautious temper, and 
independent judgment; one who in his pages united 
sound scholarship and a wide interest in life with 
literary charm; who had cast a halo of genuine 
romance over the whole of North America; and 
whose achievement was only the better assured by 
the passage of time, which would deny to his suc- 
cessors personal contact with the Indian and the fron- 
tiersman. He could not have asked for a more 
substantial reputation in his specialty. Those who 
looked beyond immediate accomplishment to the 
farther reach of spiritual aims, looked uj)on him as 
one of the most important figures in American liter- 
ature, not only by the brilliancy of his productions, 
but also by the exaltation he gave to thoroughness 
and discretion in scholarship. He had the further 
satisfaction of never feeling his work or his fame on 
the decline, for his last books were the best. Many 
degrees and honors came to him from institutions and 
societies of learning in America and Europe ; but the 
reception now and then of a letter from some live boy 
who wrote to express his enjoyment of " La Salle " or 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 237 

" Pontiac " delighted him quite as much as these 
public marks of appreciation. This brings to light 
another of the oppositions in his make-up. In 
describing Vassall Morton as "ambitious and fond 
of applause," and in referring more than once in his 
other writings to these traits, he surely gave an auto- 
biographic touch. Nothing short of the greatest 
ambition could have carried him through such difficult 
labors ; and to value commendation of the right kind 
was perfectly in keeping with his nature. But re- 
serve, dignity, good breeding, and hatred of all 
forms of self-aggrandizement made it impossible for 
him to bid for applause in any way. He was notice- 
able for never doing anything to make himself per- 
sonally prominent, or even to advertise his literary 
productions. Yet so inextricably is one's life and 
character interwoven with his artistic aims and works, 
that Parkman's heroism became known abroad and 
attended his books around the world. No man had 
a more sovereign scorn than he for physical or mental 
weakness, or for the pity and sympathy that is apt to 
come so annoyingly close to the victim of them. One 
day, in talking over a biographical notice in which a 
friend had dwelt on the historian's feebleness, he ex- 
claimed: "Damn it, I 'm not feeble! " But although 
his peculiar temper and habit of stoical endurance 
always kept him personally somewhat aloof from 
pity and tenderness, his sensitive nature accepted 
gratefully a straightforward expression of sympathy, 
especially if offered with a certain reserve. 



238 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

The world thus offered him its highest tribute in 
recognizing the merit of his work and the personal 
worth for which it stands. He must have had, too, 
the inward happiness of feeling — though he never 
would have uttered it — that what he had done per- 
fectly satisfied the artist's need of self-expression. 



CHAPTER XI 

The picturesqueness of Parkman's character ap- 
pears vividly in his citizenship. The making of 
history was fully as interesting to him as the writing 
of it. Such an eager student of life and character 
could not be indifferent to the lines of our national 
growth. He regarded "the direction of affairs of 
State as the noblest field of human effort;" saying 
also: "That greatest and most difficult of sciences, 
the science of government, dealing with interests so 
delicate, complicated, and antagonistic, becomes a 
perilous guide when it deserts the ways of temper- 
ance." He took his civic duties to heart and, con- 
sidering his disabilities, fulfilled them generously. 
Indeed, these impersonal topics were sometimes a 
welcome outlet for feelings that could hardly break 
through the barrier of his reserve in personal mat- 
ters, or get suitable opportunity for outlet in his- 
torical writing. There was a certain grandeur in 
the impersonality of his relations to life. If his 
sympathies were limited on the spiritual side, they 
were strong and quick on the side of culture and 
public interests. Nowhere else did he experience so 



240 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

much emotion, or give such forcible expression to his 
individuality. 

His miscellaneous papers, therefore, although few 
in number and limited in range, are important docu- 
ments in studying him. His intimate conversation 
was exceedingly characteristic, vigorous, and racy 
when dealing with public men and measures ; but it 
was not recorded at the time, and it cannot be recalled 
with any accuracy of detail. Parkman showed him- 
self a ready and acceptable speaker on the few occa- 
sions when he accepted invitations to speak at dinners 
or other meetings. Although only occasionally al- 
lowing himself to write or talk of current events, his 
opinions on many topics were highly valued by con- 
servatives, and the country lost much by the infre- 
quency of the warnings from this keen-eyed student 
of life. Feeling so much concern as to the lines of 
our national development and such alarm at the 
gigantic evils growing up under the shelter of our 
political system, it is quite certain that he would 
have written much more on public affairs had his 
health permitted. 

The miscellaneous papers left by Parkman admit 
us to some of the innermost courts of his character; 
for they were written under the impulsion of strong 
feeling and without the restraints necessary in histor- 
ical composition. They reveal, therefore, many of 
the qualities and defects that were structural in his 
nature as opposed to those acquired by experience, 
culture, and force of will. This distinction was less 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 241 

easily perceived in his latter years, when many of his 
native tendencies had been subdued to an uncommon 
degree. How should one suspect that this man of 
quiet manners and patient, gentle spirit was funda- 
mentally remarkable for exactly the opposite qual- 
ities ? Yet one of his classmates said that Parkman's 
manner in the college debating club was almost pugi- 
listic in its vehemence. Even in old age, talking of 
certain national tendencies, he would become hot 
with indignation, speaking in unmeasured terms, and 
clenching his fist with the desire to fight injustice 
and corruption. Two other structural elements of 
his character are displayed in these papers, — con- 
servatism and prejudice. Both sprang from his in- 
most constitution; yet, as we shall see, their lines 
were happily softened by liberality and the judicial 
spirit. Whatever court of his character we visit in 
these unrestrained, unstudied pages, we encounter 
solidity, practicality, objectivity, hatred of theories; 
yet we also find these materialistic elements infused 
with noble ambitions for honesty and culture. Finely 
compounded were the contradictions of this non- 
philosophizing philosopher, this unpoetical poet, this 
utilitarian idealist. 

The deepest and broadest question that history has 
to answer is : What kind of men and women does a 
given civilization produce ? Parkman held truly that 
the level of a civilization depends on the worth of its 
units, and that a democracy cannot pursue a success- 
ful career without placing the direction of public 

16 



242 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

affairs in the hands of worthy, capable, and educated 
leaders. This was the very corner-stone of his polit- 
ical edifice. 

As a friend of learning and a patriot, he felt the 
scholar's debt to civilization in return for the bless- 
ings of culture and protection. Education, especially 
the higher education of leaders or statesmen, was 
consequently the civic subject that most fully com- 
manded his sympathies and as much time and strength 
as could be spared from literary labors. He expressed 
his hopes and fears for education and its relations to 
our national life, in the following article : ^ 

" The Tale of the ' Ripe Scholar.' 

" Not many years ago, a certain traditional prestige, 
independent of all considerations of practical utility, at- 
tached to the scholastic character, at least in New Eng- 
land where the clergy long held a monopoly of what passed 
for learning. New England colleges were once little 
more than schools for making ministers. As the clergy 
has lost in influence, so the scholar has lost in repute, 
and the reasons are not hard to find. The really good 
scholars were exceptions, and very rare ones. In the 
matter of theology some notable results were produced, 
but secular scholarship was simply an exotic, and a sickly 
one. It never recovered from its transplantation, and 
drew no vital juices from the soil. The climate was hos- 
tile to it. All the vigor of the country drifted into prac- 
tical pursuits, and the New England man of letters, when 

1 The Nation, Dec. 23, 1869. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 243 

lie happened not to be a minister, was usually some per- 
son whom constitutional defects, bodily or mental, had 
unsuited for politics or business. He was apt to be a 
recluse, ignorant of the world, bleached by a close room 
and an iron stove, never breathing the outer air when he 
could help it, and resembling a mediaeval monk in his 
scorn of the body, or rather in his utter disregard of it. 
Sometimes he was reputed a scholar merely because he 
was nothing else. The products of his mind were as 
pallid as the hue of his face, and, like their parent, void 
of blood, bone, sinew, muscle, and marrow. That he 
should be provincial was, for a long time, inevitable, but 
that he was emasculate was chiefly his own fault. As his 
scholarship was not fruitful of any very valuable results, 
as it did not make itself felt in the living world that 
ranged round it, as, in short, it showed no vital force, it 
began at length to be regarded as a superfluous excres- 
cence. Nevertheless, like the monkish learning of the 
middle ages, it served a good purpose in keeping alive 
the traditions of liberal culture against a future renais- 
sance. We shall be told that we exaggerate, and, in one 
sense, this is true, for we describe not an individual, but 
a type, from which, however, the reality was rarely very 
remote, and with which it was sometimes identified. The 
most finished and altogether favorable example of this 
devitalized scholarship, with manj^ graceful additions, 
was Edward Everett, and its echoes may still be heard 
in the halls of Congress, perplexing Western members 
with Latin quotations, profuse, if not always correct. 

" As the nation grew in importance and in sensitiveness, 
the want of intellectual productiveness began to trouble 
the popular pride, and an impatient public called on its 



244 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

authors to be ' original.' Spasmodic efforts were made to 
respond, and the results were such as may be supposed. 
The mountain went into convulsions of labor and pro- 
duced a mouse, or something as ridiculous. After an 
analogous fashion some of the successors of our pallid 
clerical scholars raise the cry, 'Let us be strong,' and 
fall into the moral and physical gymnastics of muscular 
Christianity. This, certainly, is no bad sign, in so far as 
it indicates the consciousness of a want; but neither 
originality nor force can be got up to order. They must 
spring from a deeper root and grow by laws of their own. 
Happily our soil has begun to put forth such a growth, 
promising in quality, but as yet in quantity and in ma- 
turity, wholly inadequate to the exigent need. 

''In times of agitation, alive with engrossing questions 
of pressing moment, when all is astir with pursuit and 
controversy, when some are mad for gold, and some are 
earnest, and some rabid for this cause or for that, the 
scholarship of the past is naturally pronounced not up 
with the times. Despite his manifold failings, ' the self- 
made man,' with his palatial mansion, his exploits in 
the gold-room, in the caucus, on the stump, in Congress, 
and in the presidential chair, flatters popular self-love and 
fills the public eye. Only a slight reason is wanted for 
depreciating the scholar, and a strong one is offered. 
Because the culture which our colleges supplied, and 
which too many of them still supply, was weak, thin, 
and unsuitable, it was easy to depreciate all culture. By 
culture we mean development, not polish or adornment, 
though these are its natural and by no means useless 
belongings. Using the word, then, in this sense, culture 
is with us a supreme necessity, not for the benefit of a few, 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 245 

but of all. The presence of minds highly and vigorously 
developed is the most powerful aid to popular education, 
and the necessary condition of its best success. In a 
country where the ruling power is public opinion, it is 
above all things necessary that the best and maturest 
thought should have a fair share in forming it. Such 
thought cannot exist in any force in the community with- 
out propagating its own image, and a class of strong 
thinkers is the palladium of democracy. They are the 
natural enemies of ignorant, ostentatious, and aggressive 
wealth, and the natural friends of all that is best in the 
popular heart. They are sure of the hatred of charlatans, 
demagogues, and political sharpers. They are the only 
hope of our civilization; without them it is a failure, a 
mere platitude of mediocrity, stagnant or turbid, as the 
case may be. The vastest aggregate of average intelli- 
gences can do nothing to supply their place, and even 
material growth is impeded by an ignorance of its con- 
ditions and laws. If we may be forgiven the metaphor, 
our civilization is at present a creature with a small and 
feeble head, a large, muscular and active body, and a tail 
growing at such a rate that it threatens to become un- 
manageable and shake the balance of the vital powers. 

''The tendency of a partial education, such as the best 
popular education must of necessity be, is to produce an 
excess of self-confidence; and one of its results in this 
country is a prodigious number of persons who think, 
and persuade others to think, that they know everything 
necessary to be known, and are fully competent to form 
opinions and make speeches upon all questions whatever. 
As these are precisely the persons who make the most 
noise on the most momentous questions of the day, who 



246 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

have the most listeners and admirers, and who hold each 
other up as shining examples for imitation, their incom- 
petency becomes a public evil of the first magnitude. If 
rash and ignorant theorizing, impulsive outcries, and 
social and political charlatanry of all sorts are to have 
the guiding of our craft, then farewell to the hope that 
her voyage will be a success. The remedy is to infuse 
iuto the disordered system the sedative and the tonic of 
a broad knowledge and a vigorous reason. This means to 
invigorate and extend the higher education ; to substitute 
for the effete and futile scholarship which the popular 
mind justly holds in slight account, an energetic and 
manly development, trained to grapple with the vast 
questions of the present, and strong enough in members 
to temper with its mature thought the rashness of popular 
speculation. Our best colleges are moving hopefully in 
this direction; none of them with more life and vigor 
than the oldest of them all. The present generation will 
see an increase in the number of our really efficient 
thinkers, but it is a positive, not a relative increase and 
is far behind the fast increasing need. Powerful causes 
are at work against it, and we will try to explain what, 
to our thinking, some of these causes are. 

" Perhaps the most obvious of them is the ascendency of 
material interests among us. To the great mass of our 
population, the clearing of lands, the acquiring of new 
territory, the building of cities, the multiplication of rail- 
roads, steamboats, and telegraph lines, the growth of 
trade and manufactures, the opening of mines, with the 
resulting fine houses, fine clothes, and sumptuous fare, 
constitute the real sum and substance of progress and 
civilization. Art, literature, philosophy, and science — 



PARKMAN AS SEEN m HIS WORKS 247 

so far as science has no direct bearing on material inter- 
ests — are regarded as decorations, agreeable and credit- 
able, but not essential. In other words, the material 
basis of civilization is accepted for the entire structure. 
A prodigious number of persons think that money-making 
is the only serious business of life, and there is no cor- 
responding number who hold a different faith. There are 
not a few among us who would ' improve ' our colleges 
into schools of technology, where young men may be 
trained with a view mainly to the production of more 
steamboats, railroads, and telegraphs; more breadstuffs; 
more iron, copper, silver, and gold; more cottons and 
woollens; and, consequently, more fine houses and fine 
clothes. All this is very well, but it does not answer 
the crying need of the time. The truth is, our material 
growth so greatly exceeds our other growth that the 
body politic suffers from diseases of repletion. A patient 
bloated with generous living, and marked already with 
the eruptions of a perverted, diseased blood, is not to be 
cured solely by providing him with more food. 

" The drift towards material activity is so powerful 
among us that it is very difficult for a young man to 
resist it; and the difficulty increases in proportion as his 
nature is active and energetic. Patient and devoted 
study is rarely long continued in the vortex of American 
life. The dusty arena of competition and strife has fas- 
cinations almost irresistible to one conscious of his own 
vigor. Intellectual tastes may, however, make a com- 
promise. Journalism and the lecture-room offer them a 
field midway between the solitude of the study and the 
bustle of the world of business; but the journal and the 
lecture-room have influences powerfully adverse to solid, 



248 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

mature, and independent thinking. There, too, is the 
pulpit, for those who have a vocation that way; but in 
this, also, a mighty and increasing temptation besets the 
conscientious student. As for politics, they have fallen 
to such a pass that the men are rare who can mingle in 
them without deteriorating. 

" Paradoxical as it may seem, the diffusion of education 
and intelligence is at present acting against the free de- 
velopment of the highest education and intelligence. 
Many have hoped and still hope that by giving a partial 
teaching to great numbers of persons, a stimulus would 
be applied to the best minds among them, and a thirst for 
knowledge awakened which would lead to high results ; 
but thus far these results have not equalled the expecta- 
tion. There has been a vast expenditure of brick and 
mortar for educational purposes, and, what is more to the 
purpose, many excellent and faithful teachers of both 
sexes have labored diligently in their vocation; but the 
system of competitive cramming in our public schools has 
not borne fruits on which we have much cause to con- 
gratulate ourselves. It has produced an immense number 
of readers; but what thinkers are to be found may be said 
to exist in spite of it. The public school has put money 
in abundance in the pockets of the dealers in sensation 
stories, sensation newspapers, and all the swarm of trivial, 
sickly, and rascally literature. From this and cheap 
newspapers thousands, nay, millions, draw all their men- 
tal improvement, and pamper their mental stomachs with 
adulterated, not to say poisoned, sweetmeats, till they 
have neither desire nor digestion for strong and whole- 
some food. But we would speak rather of that truly 
intelligent and respectable public which forms the audi- 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 249 

tories of popular preachers and popular lecturers, which 
is the lavish patron of popular periodical literature, which 
interests itseK in the questions of the day, and has keen 
mental appetites of a certain kind. This public is strong 
in numbers and very strong in collective wealth. Its 
voice can confer celebrity, if not reputation; and it can 
enrich those who have its favor. In truth, it is the Amer- 
ican people. Now, what does this great public want ? 
It is, in the main, busied with the active work of life, 
and though it thinks a little and feels a great deal on 
matters which ought to engage the attention of every 
self-governing people, yet it is impatient of continuous 
and cool attention to anything but its daily business, and 
sometimes even to that. Indeed, the exciting events of 
the last ten years, joined to the morbid stimulus applied 
to all departments of business, have greatly increased this 
tendency; and to-day there are fewer serious and thought- 
ful readers than in the last decade. More than ever 
before the public demands elocution rather than reason 
of those who address it; something to excite the feelings 
and captivate the fancy rather than something to instruct 
the understanding. It rejoices in sweeping statements, 
confident assertions, bright lights and black shadows 
alternating with something funny. Neither does it care 
much for a terse, idiomatic, and pointed diction, but gen- 
erally prefers the flatulent periods of the ready writers. 
On matters of the gravest interest it craves to be excited 
or amused. Lectures professing to instruct are turned to 
a tissue of jokes, and the pulpit itself is sometimes en- 
livened after a similar fashion. The pill must be sugared 
and the food highly seasoned, for the public mind is in a 
state of laxity and needs a tonic. But the public taste is 



250 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

very exacting, and it offers great and tempting rewards to 
those who please it. 

''That which pleases it pays so much better in money 
and notoriety, and is so much cheaper of production, than 
the better article which does not please it, that the temp- 
tation to accept light work and high wages in place of 
hard work and low wages is difficult to resist. Nothing 
but a deep love of truth or of art can stand unmoved 
against it. In our literary markets, educated tastes are 
completely outridden by uneducated or half-educated tastes, 
and the commodity is debased accordingly. Thus, the 
editor of a magazine may be a man of taste and talents; 
but his interests as a man of letters and his interests as 
a man of business are not the same. ' \Yhy don't you 
make your magazine what it ought to be ? ' we once asked 
a well-known editor. 'Because,' he replied, 'if we did 
we should lose four-fifths of our circulation.' A noted 
preacher not long ago confessed to us that the temptation 
to give his audience the sort of preaching which they 
liked to hear, instead of that which it was best that they 
should hear, was almost irresistible. 

" The amount of what we have been saying is, that the 
public which demands a second-rate article is so enor- 
mously large in comparison with the public which de- 
mands a first-rate article that it impairs the quality of 
literary production, and exercises an influence adverse to 
the growth of intellectual eminence. Now, what is the 
remedy ? It seems to us to be twofold. First, to direct 
popular education, not to stuffing the mind with crude 
aggregations of imperfect knowledge, but rather to the 
development of its powers of observation, comparison, 
analysis, and reasoning; to strengthening and instruct- 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 251 

ing its moral sense, and leading it to self-knowledge and 
consequent modesty. All this, no doubt, is vastly more 
difficult and far less showy in its results than the present 
system of competitive cramming, and requires in its 
teachers a high degree of good sense and sound instruc- 
tion. The other remedy consists in a powerful re- 
enforcement of the higher education, and the consequent 
development of a class of persons, whether rich or poor, 
so well instructed and so numerous as to hold their 
ground against charlatanry, and propagate sound and 
healthy thought through the community. He who gives 
or bequeathes money to a well-established and wisely- 
conducted university confers a blessing which radiates 
through all the ranks of society. He does a service 
eminently practical, and constitutes himself the patron 
of the highest and best utilitarianism." 

One of the most important influences Parkman had 
on his times was to stimulate a love of thoroughness 
in scholarship. This was done through his works, 
and through his relations with individual men, insti- 
tutions, and the press. His interest in public libraries 
needs hardly to be stated. He helped by his mem- 
bership and counsel a large number of learned socie- 
ties in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The 
Archaeological Institute of America felt his influence 
perhaps more than any other society. It was orig- 
inally projected by scholars of especially classical 
tastes ; but not meeting with sufficient support they 
soon called on Parkman and others for help. At the 
organizing meeting the classicists for a time had their 



252 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PAROIAN 

own way and imposed European subjects as the aim 
of the society's labors ; but Parkman so ably and vig- 
orously presented the claims of America as to cause 
the enlargement of those aims to cover a broader field. 
As long as he served in the executive committee and 
the council, he remained the champion of American 
themes. The investigations carried on by Gushing, 
Bandelier, Captain Bourke, Miss Fletcher, and 
others, naturally attracted him, and, although he 
could not read enough to follow their labors closely, 
he personally aided them in many ways. With no 
fondness for ancient history and classical subjects, 
he yet contributed to the fund for establishing the 
American School of Classical Studies at Athens. 
All students and societies seeking information found 
him ever generous with his stores of learning. Some 
of his hardest efforts, indeed, made at times when 
labor was most difficult, were put forth to help 
students of history in collecting or publishing 
documents, — as in the ^case of Stevens, Margry, 
Bannestier, and others. 

His interest in our public schools was of the deep- 
est, even as his demands for them were of the highest. 
He said: 

' ' We are told that, to make a bad voter a good one, we 
have only to educate him. His defect, however, is not 
merely intellectual. It consists also in the want of the 
feeling that his own interests are connected with those of 
the community, and in the weakness or absence of the 
sense of moral and political duty. The evil is not to be 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 253 

cured by reading, writing, and arithmetic. The public 
school may cram his brain with all it is capable of con- 
taining, and he will be no whit the better citizen for the 
process. It might train instead of cramming him, lay 
the foundation of a sound morality, and teach him some- 
thing of political and social duty; but such education is 
more difficult than that now in vogue, and demands 
more judgment and ability in those who conduct it. 
To teach the teacher must be the first step ; and here, as 
in everything else connected with public education, we 
find ourselves moving in a vicious circle. To whom have 
we entrusted these high and delicate interests? They 
demand the best intelligence and the best conscience of 
the community ; and yet their control rests, in the last 
resort, with legislatures and municipal bodies represent- 
ing in part that very public which needs education the 
most — wretched, wire-pulling demagogues, ignorant as 
the constituencies that chose them, reckless of public 
duty, and without the faintest notion of what true edu- 
cation is. In such education rests the only hope of 
democracies ; but it is vain to look for it unless the wiser 
half of the public can regain its virtual control. " ^ 

Parkman's concern for education thus sprang from 
love of learning and patriotism combined. Speaking 
of the Catholic attacks on our public schools he 
said: 

''The common school system with its harmonizing and 
assimilating influences is the life of our institutions; and 
if New England is not to lose all that is best in her we 

1 North American Review, July, 1878, p. 9. 



254 A LIFE OP FRANCIS PARKMAN 

must defend it with a firmness at once temperate and 
unyielding." 

He was, however, opposed to any bigoted anti- 
Catholic agitation, and believed that "the most 
effective defence of public schools will be the increase 
of their teaching efficiency and the maintenance 
and growth of their superiority over the parochial 
schools."^ 

But much as he valued popular education, he had 
little faith in it by itself to safeguard our institu- 
tions; insisting that it must be directed by minds 
of superior culture, and that if common schools 
are necessary to a democracy, universities of the 
highest excellence are still more important. 

His most important activities as a citizen and a 
friend of learning were his labors in helping the 
growth of Harvard College into a university. With 
his strong sense of civic obligation he maintained 
that every rich man must give freely, and every 
educated man must labor earnestly for the welfare 
of the land that shelters him. The infirmities that 
imposed so many privations upon his course of life, 
deprived him of strength for serving in public and 
exacting positions. Harvard therefore furnished a 
welcome outlet for his patriotism, and a precious 
opportunity for discharging a sacred obligation. 
Nothing outdoes the Board of a great university in 
the diversity and importance of the questions which 
come up for discussion; they range over the entire 

1 Our Common Schools, 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 255 

field of civilization, — art, science, religion, industry, 
war, commerce, politics, — in short, every human 
interest ; and back of all these external achievements 
lies the heart of the matter: the growth of character. 
Parkman was especially valuable in this place, and 
gave himself freely to the duties of his office. As 
no records exist of his efforts therein, we can only 
sketch roughly the general lines of his views. 

Parkman had strong local attachments, and Har- 
vard College in particular commanded his affection 
and gratitude. He was indeed closely bound to her, 
for many of his ancestors were sons of Harvard ; his 
father had been an Overseer and benefactor; he him- 
self had formed there many lasting friendships, and 
conceived the object of his life-work. " La Salle " 
was dedicated to the class of 1844, " Montcalm and 
Wolfe " to Harvard College. His official connection 
with the college began in 1852, when the Overseers 
appointed him to a vacancy in the committee for 
examining in history. By 1868 his fame led the 
alumni to select him as one of the Overseers for the 
term of six years ; but he was able to serve only half 
that period. In 1874 he was again elected to the 
same office by a large majority. In 1875 the most 
gratifying tribute of all was paid to his worth and 
eminence — election as a Fellow of the Corporation 
of Harvard College. In this Board of seven mem- 
bers he served until obliged by infirmities to resign 
in 1888. 

His position on the Board was unique, he being 



256 A LIFE OF FRAXCIS PARKMAN 

the first man chosen into the corporation during the 
present century because of his eminence as a student 
and author. As thus distinguished from those emi- 
nent in the so-called learned professions, he was the 
last scholar on the Board. His state of health pre- 
venting him from attending to practical matters of 
administration, he was little more than an adviser; 
but as such distinctly represented the higher scholarly 
interests. Thus his wisdom had an important influ- 
ence in the development of the university. 

He was always faithful in attendance when his 
infirmities did not absolutely prevent it. His love 
of discipline and order showed itself in his punctu- 
ality ; if ever five minutes late at a meeting, he failed 
not to apologize; and whenever he met Mr. Eliot, 
who was ten years his junior, he always addressed 
him as Mr. President. His attendance at the meet- 
ings was often touching, as an evidence of his inter- 
est and sense of duty. After sitting perhaps an 
hour, the knitted brows, the flushed face, and a dazed, 
oppressed expression showed that his brain could no 
longer endure the strain of mental application. He 
would then excuse himself, get up and walk about 
the room, or go out of doors, returning in a few min- 
utes to his place at the table. 

The general lines of Parkman's educational work 
were apparently irreconcilable with some of his basic 
traits. Intensely conservative in most things, he 
represented the liberals in education and the radicals 
in religion. Out of sympathy as he was with many 



PAROIAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 257 

elements of modern life, he yet labored in unison 
with President Eliot not merely to expand Harvard 
College into a university, but to fit it closely to mod- 
ern needs. 

But his deepest concern in culture regarded its 
influence in the development of character. 

"We of New England," he wrote, "are a bookish 
people. With us, the idea of education is inseparable 
from school-houses, schoolmasters, lyceums, public libra- 
ries, colleges, and diplomas. Yet these are but second- 
ary agencies — pallid, nerveless, and emasculate, beside 
those mighty educational powers which spring out of the 
currents of life itself, the hopes, the fears, the responsi- 
bilities, the exigencies, the action or the idleness, the 
enjoyment or the suffering, the associations, the friend- 
ships, enmities, rivalries, and conflicts, which make the 
sum of each man's vital history." ^ 

He thus depended on the cultivation of judgment bj- 
close contact with nature and men, quite as much as 
on the pursuit of technical learning. In his own 
schooling he had followed this idea and won a rich 
reward. He hated bookworms and "unproductive 
digs," fearing the mirage of the study, and continu- 
ally warning men against "emasculate scholarship." 
Strangely enough, he cherished great aversion for 
many elements of the intellectual life, and detested 
even the words culture and refinement, because of 
the artificialities connected with them. 

Viewing education as the beginning of a growth 

1 A letter to the Boston Daily Advertiser, July 17, 1863. 
17 



258 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

that must continue throughout life, he felt that the 
student's chief need was manly virtue. His own 
love of the wilderness clearly reflected itself in his 
ideals. He demanded that the student should be an 
improved savage, — virile, natural, full of strength 
and dexterity, resourceful in emergencies, and inti- 
mate with nature ; but at the same time governed by 
delicacy and decorum. 

If ever a man believed in the motto, "A healthy 
mind in a healthy body," that man was Parkman. 
His contempt was called forth by physical weakness 
more frequently, I think, than by any other defect of 
humanity. He would often exclaim, "How I hate 
'em," in speaking of weakly or unattractive specimens 
of the race. The ground on which he built his hopes 
for America was large families of strong, healthy 
children. Now and then he uttered strong language 
against the small families of our Americans ; for he 
saw in the decline of the native Protestant element 
in our population the gravest dangers to our national 
institutions. 

His admiration for strenuous virility was the chief 
cause of his amusing aversion for ministers. Despite 
a long line of clerical ancestors, this feeling sprang 
up in his boyhood, and under the paternal roof. 
One day when a pious old lady, who was noted for 
her admiration of clergymen, called on the Reverend 
Dr. Parkman, Frank sat down by the window to 
amuse himself by drawing caricatures. When on 
rising to depart she went over to see his sketch, she 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 259 

found a picture of three devils carrying off three 
ministers on pitchforks, gowns and bands fluttering 
in the air with the speed of their progress. He never 
lost this dislike of the cloth. In his old age, writing 
of a boy who had been named after him, he said 
jocosely : " I hope the youngster will do honor to the 
name. He should be brought up to some respect- 
able calling and not allowed to become a minister." 
He had seen in history only too often how prone 
were theological studies to make men narrow, hypo- 
critical and cruel; and shrank, instinctively, from 
nearly every element of their training, life, and 
character, often gratifying his love of humor and of 
strong language by calling them "vermin." He 
thought them, as a class, vague, gushing, soft, spoilt 
by women's attentions, sentimental, unenergetic, and 
insincere in their professions of faith. It is perhaps 
needless to add that this instinctive dislike of the 
profession did not prevent him from counting among 
his friends several members of it for whom he had the 
highest regard. Until the Harvard Theological 
School was made non-sectarian, he could not be in- 
duced to take the slightest interest in it, nor did he 
like any mention of the chair in it that was founded 
by his father. 

The education of woman called forth very few 
utterances from Parkman ; and these were such inci- 
dental remarks in the discussion of woman-suffrage 
that they were hardly heard. While favoring the 
establishment of Radcliffe College in affiliation with 



260 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

Harvard, he opposed the granting of diplomas to 
women, and distrusted the employment of the already 
fully occupied professors of Harvard as teachers in 
Radcliffe. Yet his interest in woman's education was 
sincere and far-sighted. In speaking of maternity 
he said: 

*'It is the root and stem of national existence, while 
the occupations of men are but the leaves and branches. 
On women of the intelligent and instructed classes de- 
pends the future of the nation. If they are sound in 
body and mind, impart this soundness to numerous off- 
spring, and rear them to a sense of responsibility and 
duty, there are no national evils that we cannot over- 
come. If they fail to do their part, then the masses of 
the coarse and unintelligent, always of rapid increase, 
will overwhelm us and our institutions. ... To give 
women a thorough and wholesome training both of body 
and mind; to prepare such of them as have strength and 
opportunity for various occupations different from what 
they usually exercise, and above all for the practice of 
medicine, in which we believe that they may render valu- 
able service; to rear them in more serious views of life 
and its responsibilities, are all in the way of normal and 
healthy development. ... In the full and normal de- 
velopment of womanhood lie the best interests of the 
world." 

Although not sympathizing greatly with the training 
of woman for any career that takes them away from 
home, he desired for them breadth of culture in the 
fundamentals of character. 



PAEKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 261 

His term of service in Harvard covered a period of 
important changes. The adoption of elective courses, 
the granting of more freedom and self-government to 
students, the change from the old recitation to the 
lecture system, the development of all kinds of 
athletic sports, and the expansion of the curriculum 
to promote the higher intellectual culture, — these 
features wrought a complete transformation of college 
life. And Parkman welcomed them all, for all 
appealed to manliness and a sense of responsibility. 
A firm belief in the inductive method led him to a 
deep interest in the development of scientific lines of 
education. He took much pleasure in his meetings 
with Agassiz, Wyman, Gray and other scientists ; and 
showed towards some of this class, whom personally 
he did not like, a respect and deference not common 
in his self-reliant mentality. But, although drawn to 
the scientific, practical, objective side of things, he 
deprecated any tendency to convert a university into 
a group of merely technical schools; it should, he 
thought, remain distinctly the centre of the highest 
intellectual culture and influence. As to methods of 
instruction and discipline, he would leave students 
and professors perfectly free, with the exception of 
one unfailing demand as to results — thoroughness, 
without sterilization by too exclusive pursuit of eru- 
dition. Perhaps one of his best traits was an utter 
contempt for superficial education ; he had a mission 
to puncture shams and expose the dangers of preten- 
tious ignorance. It may be noted in passing that his 



262 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PAEKMAN 

conservative spirit led him always to call the institu- 
tion by its old name of Harvard College, though it is 
quite possible this practice was in part due to that 
high standard of sincerity which would hold back the 
greater name until the school should really attain its 
full growth. 

In addition to these general interests in the devel- 
opment of Harvard, Parkman held one special aim of 
prime importance. Having at heart our national 
welfare, he could never lose sight of the privileges 
and responsibilities of the university in regard to 
national growth. He dreaded the levelling-down 
tendencies of democratic equalit3% An extract from 
" The Failure of Universal Suffrage " will show this 
plainly : 

''The slow but ominous transfer of power from supe- 
rior to inferior types of men, as shown in city coun- 
cils, legislatures, and Congress, has told with withering 
effect on the growth of true political ability. Debased 
as our politics are, they do not invite, and hardly even 
admit, the higher and stronger faculties to a part in 
them. Liberal education is robbed of its best continu- 
ance and consummation, in so far as it is shut out from 
that noblest field of human effort, the direction of affairs 
of state; that career of combined thought and action 
where all the forces of the mind are called forth, and of 
whicb the objects and results are to those of the average 
American politician what the discoveries and inventions 
of applied science are to the legerdemain of a street 
juggler. The professions still remain open, and in these 
comparatively limited fields the results are good. Liter- 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WOEKS 263 

ature offers another field; but here the temptation is 
powerful to write or speak down to the level of that 
vast average of education which makes the largest returns 
in profit and celebrity. The best literature we have has 
followed the natural law and sprung up in two or three 
places where educated intelligence has reached a point 
high enough to promise it a favorable hearing. For the 
rest, our writers address themselves to an audience so 
much accustomed to light food that they have no stomach 
for the strong. The public has its effect too on the 
pulpit. It is pleasanter to tell the hearer what he likes 
to hear than to tell him what he needs ; and the love of 
popularity is not confined to the laity. From one point 
of view, the higher education is of no great use among 
us. It is not necessary to make a millionaire, a party 
leader, such as our party leaders are, or a popular 
preacher or writer. So little is it needed for such pur- 
poses, that the country is full of so-called 'practical 
men,' who cry out against it in scorn. Yet, from a 
true point of view, it is of supreme use and necessity, 
and a deep responsibility rests on those who direct it. 
What shall be its aims? Literature, scholarship and 
physical science, are all of importance, but, considered 
in themselves, their place is subordinate, for they cannot 
alone meet the requirements of the times. It has been 
said that liberal culture tends to separate men from the 
nation at large, and form them into a class apart; and, 
without doubt, this is to a certain degree true of the 
merely aesthetic, literary or scholastic culture. What we 
most need is a broad and masculine education, bearing 
on questions of society and government; not repelling 
from active life, but preparing for it and impelling 



264 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

toward it. The discipline of the university should be 
a training for the arena." 

A man who really believes that the salvation of a 
democracy depends on its having leaders of worth 
and culture, will naturally insist on the formation of 
statesmen. Parkman maintained that orators will 
always exert great influence over the masses, and 
not lose their power even with the growth of the 
press. He therefore proposed and urged the estab- 
lishment of the course called "English 6," whose 
object is to develop debaters, and prepare men to 
discuss questions connected with political science 
and history. 

Parkman 's labors in Harvard sprang chiefly from 
one side of his nature. By inheritance a conserva- 
tive utilitarian, he became in education a liberal, 
and almost an idealist. His associates speak of 
him as distinctly the representative of the higher 
scholarly interests. From one point of view this is 
surprising; since he felt little personal interest in 
philosophical, aesthetic, or spiritual questions. Pos- 
sibly this estimate sprang from a perception of the 
purity and energy of his intellectual nature, quite as 
much as from his particular desires and efforts. He 
sought especially the welfare of the students in re- 
gard to developing manliness, and watched the policy 
of the university in regard to elevating our national 
life; he promoted all elements of education that 
could contribute to these ends, according to the na- 
ture of each individual student. He regarded even 



PARKJVIAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 265 

philosophy, sesthetics, and receptive and sympathetic 
spirituality not as ends, but as means to the devel- 
opment of character. In short, he would have a 
society composed of men and women of sound bodies 
and thorough culture, having intellectual energy 
and public spirit, and . following a high standard of 
character and manners. He himself was what he 
once described as a " patron of the highest and best 
utilitarianism." 

The same temperament that fitted him so marvel- 
lously for his chosen work placed him in opposition 
to nearly every characteristic movement of nineteenth 
century civilization. He was not affected by any one 
of the great forces, social philanthropy, natural 
science, or religion. In fact, the various reformatory 
measures growing out of them were to him irritating 
topics to be avoided; only now and then would he 
cast at reforms a bit of his humorous exaggeration 
or run them through with a thrust of his keen 
invective. 

1. Democratic philanthropies could hardly appeal 
to such a man as Parkman. A heroic man of martial 
temper, he was naturally a hero-worshipper ; and his 
enthusiasm for the study of character carried him 
in the same direction. Yet being more critical than 
laudatory, more acutely accurate than broadly affec- 
tionate, his interest in great men did not include 
much personal fondness and admiration. They were 
forces in history rather than objects of partisan 
devotion. 



266 A LIFE OF FKANCIS PARKMAN 

We are hardly surprised to find in Parkman strong 
aristocratic tendencies. In this as in many other 
thing's his nature was at war with itself. An 
elevated character will always hate what is vulgar, 
but, unquestionably, a certain ancestry and environ- 
ment will predispose a man to esteem birth and 
social conditions, even in the most highly developed 
democracy, as very influential powers. Parkman 
believed in blood. He would continue his confidence 
in a man of good family even against some serious 
errors of conduct; and by the same token he seldom 
hoped much from a man born of a family of inferior 
quality. It need not be said that he felt no reverence 
for the arbitrary distinctions of titles; his patent of 
nobility was personal worth. Thus by tempera- 
mental inclination as well as by conviction, he came 
to regard leaders of worth and capacity as the regen- 
erating powers of civilization. 

The limitations of Parkman's sympathy and in- 
sight had a decided eifect on his political opinions. 
Instinctively regarding the lower classes from a dis- 
tance, and practical to the core, he perceived, chiefly, 
the roughnesses and discords inseparable from the 
life of average mankind; seldom penetrating to the 
inner spiritual elements, the fundamental unisons of 
humanity. He seldom expressed sentiments of pity 
and tenderness either for himself or for humanity 
at large. He deplored the modern tendency to dis- 
cover "objects of sympathy in vagabonds, thieves, 
and ruffians." Thus, partly from a martial manli- 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 267 

ness that hated every defect of body and mind, 
partly from inborn aristocratic tendencies, and partly 
from an aversion to philanthropic sentimentality, he 
was temperamentally unsympathetic with the lower 
ranks of men. On his vacation trip of 1842 about 
Lake George, he could write in his diary such a 
passage as this: 

"There could be no finer place for gentlemen's seats 
than this, but now, for the most part, it is occupied by a 
race of boors about as uncouth, mean, and stupid as the 
hogs they seem chiefly to delight in," 

And even in his full maturity in 1878 he called tlie 
working classes "the barbarians of civilization." ^ 

Yet a careful view shows these hard utterances 
to be misleading exaggerations in regard to his faitli 
in humanity taken as a whole. He distrusted the 
wealthy quite as much as the mired masses. Wit- 
ness the following: 

''Two enemies, unknown before, have risen like spirits 
of darkness on our social and political horizon — an 
ignorant proletariat and a half-taught plutocracy. Be- 
tween lie the classes, happily still numerous and strong, 
in whom rests our salvation. ... In the platitudes of 
democratic society two counter-influences are apparent — 
the one a curse, and the other a blessing : First those 
sudden upheavals of accumulated wealth which break 
with sinister portent that broad distribution of property 
which once formed our safety; and, secondly, this recent 
reinforcement of trained intelligence. Each confronts 
^ Article on Failure of Universal Suffrage, p. 4. 



268 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

the other; for culture is no friend of vulgar wealth, and 
most of the mountains of gold and silver we have lately 
seen are in the keeping of those who are very ill fitted to 
turn them to the profit of civilization." ^ 

The civil war struck fii-e from his martial spirit in 
many ways ; and the heroism of the people often won 
from him expressions of admiration such as tliis: 
"Degenerate as our public men may be, the people 
at large of our time do not lose in comparison with 
their fathers. " 2 He believed in human goodness as 
the power to work out the regeneration of civiliza- 
tion; and in trusting to this rather than to the re- 
mote powers of the Unknown, he only followed his 
strong common-sense. But, going still farther away 
from the visionary, he insisted that to be effective 
human goodness must be embodied in individual 
leaders of ability and worth. Under such leaders his 
faith in humanity was unbounded. 

It is evident that Parkman must have regarded 
with profound aversion the so-called democratic prin- 
ciple of equality. He wrote of it: 

''Vague and half unconsciously, but every day more 
and more, the masses hug the flattering illusion that one 
man is essentially about as good as another. They will 
not deny that there is great difference in the quality of 
horses or dogs, but they refuse to see it in their own 
genus. A jockey may be a democrat in the street, hut he 
is sure to be an aristocrat in the stable. And yet the 

1 Failure of Universal Suffrage, pp. 4, 17. 

2 The Atlantic, January, 18G8, p. 128. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 269 

essential difference between man and man is incompar- 
ably greater than that between horse and horse, or dog 
and dog; though, being chiefly below the surface, the 
general eye can hardly see it. Mountains and molehills, 
deserts and fertile valleys, and all the universal inequal- 
ity of Nature, are but types of inequality in men. To 
level the outward world would turn it into barrenness, 
and to level human minds to one stature would make 
them barren as well. The history of the progress of man- 
kind is the history of its leading minds. The masses, 
left to themselves, are hardly capable of progress, except 
material progress, and even that imperfectly. Through 
the long course of history, a few men, to be counted by 
scores or by tens, have planted in the world the germs of 
a growth, whose beneficent vitality has extended itself 
through all succeeding ages; and any one of these men 
outweighs in value to mankind myriads of nobles, citizens, 
and peasants, who have fought or toiled in their genera- 
tion, and then rotted into oblivion." ^ He pictured us as 
a nation subject to the " tyrant of organized ignorance, 
led by unscrupulous craft, and marching, amid the ap- 
plause of fools, under the flag of equal rights." ^ 

Such a picture from the pen of an American 
patriot is startling; but although characteristic of 
Parkman's independence of mind and vigor of speech, 
it would not be fair to take it by itself as embodying 
his political faith. His anti-democratic tendencies 
were more than matched by an ardent love of free- 
dom and fairness. He strenuously demanded: "A 
society where liberty is complete, and where all men 

1 Failure of Universal Suffrage, p. 5. 2 /^(V/.^ p. 2. 



270 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

have equal opportunities of development, according 
to their several qualities."^ This demand was not 
incompatible with a distrust of modern democratic 
methods, and Parkman had his own ideas as to the 
best means of reaching development and freedom. 
He said again: 

" Shall we look for an ideal society in that which tends 
to a barren average and a weary uniformity, treats men 
like cattle, counts them by the head, and gives them a 
vote apiece without asking whether or not they have the 
sense to use it ; or in that which recognizes the inherent 
differences between man and man, and gives the prepon- 
derance to power, to character and intelligence, yet re- 
moves artificial barriers, keeps circulation free through 
all its parts, and rewards merit wherever it appears with 
added influence ? " 2 

In all sociological matters he was oddly divided 
against himself. While his manner was entirely 
without hauteur, he needed every whit of the common 
sense, kindliness, and human interest that were his, 
to restrain a contempt for inferiority of all sorts. He 
was a "good fellow " with any man of any rank whose 
character commanded his respect; or even, for the 
sake of studying life and character, with many whom 
he did not approve. But, democratic in personal 
relations, he was an undoubted aristocrat in politics 
and in his intellectual relations to humanity. He 
believed in equality of opportunity, but not in equality 
of power to rule. 

1 Failure of Universal Suffrage, p. 2. ^ Jhid., p. 6. 



PARKMAN AS SEEX IN HIS WORKS 271 

Despite certain idealistic tendencies, he hated 
abstractions, theories, and sentiments in matters of 
government. He said: "Iroquois legislation in- 
vented nothing ; like all sound legislation, it built of 
materials already prepared." ^ And again: 

"There are no political panaceas, except in the imagi- 
nation of political quacks. To each degree and each 
variety of public development there are corresponding 
institutions best answering to the public needs; and 
what is meat to one is poison to another. Freedom is for 
those who are fit for it. The rest will lose it or turn it 
to corruption." ^ 

This passage shows a distrust of all forms of gov- 
ernment viewed as essential means to national salva- 
tion. A republic was to Parkman not necessarily 
the summit of political wisdom. But if he distrusted 
democracy he still more distrusted oligarchy, auto- 
cracy, and aristocracy. 

His political activities were limited by his disabili- 
ties to the writing of a few articles for the press. 
We find his work more critical than constructive; 
treating of broad national needs, never concerning 
itself with party politics. For all this, he was, during 
the civil war, an ardent Union republican ; and, until 
he became a "mugwump," always voted the republi- 
can ticket when able to go to the polls. He was a 

^ Manners and Customs of Primitive Indian Tribes. — North Amer- 
ican Revieiv, July, 1865. 
* Old Regime, p. 446. 



272 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

regular reader of the New York "Nation," believing 
its severe criticism of our evils a salutary tonic. 

We cannot but look upon this stern, strenuous 
figure as a prophet calling for political righteousness, 
and proclaiming the dangers that have grown up 
under the shelter of our free institutions. He dis- 
trusted the very corner-stone of democracy: 

''That the ignorant, incompetent and vicious of any 
color or either sex should vote, I regard as a peril to civ- 
ilization, and an injury to the entire community, them- 
selves included. Promiscuous suffrage is the deepest 
source of our present political evils." ^ 

He protested against the ballot being "an educa- 
tion in itself, capable of making good citizens out of 
the poorest material; "^ and maintained that the un- 
restricted franchise — a safeguard in the hands of a 
limited population of patriots such as we had in colo- 
nial times — had become a peril in the hands of a 
mixed population under the domination of dema- 
gogues and material interests. He said: 

"When a majority of the people become convinced that 
no aggregate of folly can produce sense, and no aggregate 
of worthlessness can produce honesty, and when they re- 
turn to the ancient faith that sense and honesty are essen- 
tial to good government, then it will become possible — 
not, perhaps, peaceably to abolish a debased suffrage — 
but to counteract and so far neutralize it that it may 
serve as a safety-valve and cease to be a danger." 

1 Letter to Col. T. W. Higginson, June 5, 1876. 

2 Failure of Universal Suffrage, p. 9. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 273 

His paper on " The Failure of Universal Suffrage " 
deserves the attention it received both at home and 
abroad, for its earnest consideration of the gravest 
topics. Woman-suffrage naturally fell under his dis- 
approval as a part of "promiscuous " suffrage, and for 
other reasons which we shall consider later. 

The lowest deep of Parkman's hatred was reserved 
for selfish politicians. By as much as he considered 
statesmanship the highest calling, so did he despise 
the demagogue as a "political reptile." There was 
nothing in our national life that he feared to the 
same degree. Boundless perils were held in store for 
us by "the machine" and the demagogue's control of 
an ignorant proletariat. His words on the subject 
are swords of flame: 

' ' ISTever, since history recorded the life of nations, was 
such a people so led, or rather so entangled in such a 
political mesh-work. We make no allusion to this party 
or that. Men and parties will change, but the same 
bad system rules rampant over all. Still the same wither- 
ing machinery of caucuses and conventions, the same com- 
binations, wheel within wheel, of adroit and selfish 
managers, the organized scramble of mean men for petty 
spoils, clogging the avenues and outlets of public opinion, 
jealously vigilant of the rostrum and the press, and limit- 
ing the votes of an acquiescent people to such candidates 
as may suit, not the national interests, but their own. 
As freemen and sovereigns we go to the polls and cast our 
votes, not after our own judgment, but at the dictation of 
self-constituted knots and combinations of men whom we 
can neither esteem nor trust. If we did otherwise our 

18 



274 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

vote would be thrown away. A many-lieaded despotism 
is exercised in the name of the largest liberty. If to 
degrade public morals, sink the national reputation, 
weaken the national counsels, rout out the race of states- 
men, and place pliant incompetency in control of our 
destiny, — if those are the ends of government, then is 
our political management a masterpiece of human wit." ^ 

Parkman's want of confidence in the masses seems 
to have been aroused by this obedience of theirs to 
demagogues, more than from any essential lack of 
respect for humanity. He had full faith in the feel- 
ing of the people, though not in their judgment. 
He wrote thus of them: 

"We are told to look at the great popular uprising of 
the civil war. Here, indeed, democracy revealed itself 
in its grandest aspect. The degrading elements had not 
then reached the volume and force that they have reached 
to-day. There were no doubts and no complications. 
Victory meant national integrity, and defeat meant 
national disintegration. Above all, the cause had its 
visible emblem — the national flag; and thousands and 
hundreds of thousands of eyes were turned upon it in 
loving and ardent devotion. We heard a great deal at 
that time about ' thinking bayonets.' The bayonets did 
not think, nor did those who carried them. They did 
what was more to the purpose — they felt. The emer- 
gency did not call for thought, but for faith and courage, 
and both were there in abundance. The political reptiles 
hid away, or pretended to change their nature, and for a 
time the malarious air was purged as by a thunder-storm. 

^ Letter to the Boston Daily Advertiser, July, 1863. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 275 

Peace brought a change. Questions intricate and diffi- 
cult, demanding brains more than hearts, and discretion 
more than valor, took the place of the simple alternative, 
to be or not to be. The lion had had his turn, and now 
the fox, the jackal, and the wolf, took theirs. Every sly 
political trickster, whom the storm had awed into obscur- 
ity, now found his opportunity. The reptiles crawled out 
again, multiplied, and infested caucuses, conventions, and 
Congress. But the people were the saddest spectacles; 
the same people that had shown itself so heroic in the 
hour of military trial, were now perplexed, bewildered, 
tossed between sense and folly, right and wrong, taking 
advice of mountebanks, and swallowing their filthy nos- 
trums. The head of Demos was as giddy as his heart had 
been strong." ^ 

Parkman felt that the corruption of our political 
life presented another danger of the greatest magni- 
tude, and that it must be energetically opposed by 
civil service reform. 

''There is no hope," he said, "but in purging and 
strengthening the republic. The remedy must be slow, 
not rash and revolutionary. A debased and irresponsible 
suffrage is at the bottom of the evil, but the state is sick 
of diseases that do not directly and immediately spring 
from this source. Something is due to the detestable 
maxim that to the victor belongs the spoils, and the 
fatuity that makes office the reward of party service, de- 
mands incessant rotation, dismisses the servant of the 
public as soon as he has learned to serve well, prefers 

' Failure of Universal Suffrage, p. 10. 



276 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

the interests of a needy politician to the interests of the 
whole people, sets a premium on trickery and discourages 
faithful industry. When the scraps and marrow-bones of 
office are flung down to be scrambled for, the dogs are sure 
to get the lion's share." ^ 

But the immediate evil of vitally injuring the public 
service is small as compared with the general moral 
and intellectual ruin it causes. In this regard he was 
concerned not only for the national conscience and 
standard of duty, but especially for the higher edu- 
cation and development of character in the cultured 
class. He said : 

''While the faculties that win material success are 
spurred to the utmost, and urged to their strongest 
development, those that find their exercise in the higher 
fields of thought and action are far from being so. For 
minds that mere wealth and mere notoriety cannot satisfy, 
the inducements are weak and the difficulties great. The 
slow but ominous transfer of power from superior to 
inferior types of men, as shown in city councils, legisla- 
tures, and Congress, has told with withering effect on the 
growth of true political ability. Debased as our politics 
are, they do not invite, and hardly even admit, the higher 
and stronger faculties to a part in them. Liberal educa- 
tion is robbed of its best continuance and consummation, 
and in so far as it is shut out from that noblest field of 
human effort, the direction of affairs of state." ^ 

His deep sense of civic duty made him call on young 
men of worth and culture to undertake our political 
regeneration : 

1 Failure of Universal Suffrage, p. 12. ' Ibid., p. 17. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 277 

''Here, then, is a career worthy of the best, for Bone 
but they can. grapple with the complicated mischiefs of 
our politics. Those gallant youths, and others such as 
they, who were so ready to lay down life for their coun- 
try, may here find a strife more difficult and not less 
honorable. If there is virtue in them for an effort so 
arduous, then it is folly to despair. If a depraved politi- 
cal system sets them aside in favor of meaner men, and 
denies them the career to which the best interests of the 
nation calls them, then let them attack this depraved 
system, and, in so doing, make a career of their own. 
The low politician is not a noble foe, but he is strong and 
dangerous enough to make it manly to fight him ; and the 
cause of his adversary is the cause of the people, did they 
but know it ; or at least of that part of the people that is 
worth the name. No doubt, the strife is strangely un- 
equal j for on one side are ranged all the forces of self- 
interest, always present and always active ; and on the 
other only duty and patriotism. But if the virtue and 
reason of the nation can be as well organized as its folly 
and knavery are organized to-day, a new hope will rise 
upon us, and they who can achieve such a result will not 
lack their reward." ^ 

Patriots, then, were the men for whom Parkman 
had the greatest admiration, and Washington stood 
at their head. This grand figure should be the beau- 
ideal of American youth; and in his estimation one 
of the worst results of the Rebellion was the relative 
obscurity into which it had cast Washington by exalt- 
ing others of less worth. Hamilton came second 

1 Failure of Universal Suffrage, p. 19. 



278 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

only to Washington. Franklin was "a great man," 
and admirable in many ways, but too thrifty and 
materialistic. Jefferson he disliked exceedingly for 
his sentimental following of the French democracy; 
Jean- Jacques Rousseau was "a depraved and half 
crazy man of genius." He came at last to admire 
Lincoln, though thinking him generally over-rated, 
— a man whose undeniable worth and usefulness 
were due to circumstances more than to inherent 
ability. Sumner he considered as not only senti- 
mental, but deficient in corn-age and manliness: 
Garrison and Phillips also won little admiration 
from him. 

Parkman's political ambition for the nation em- 
bodied his broadest and highest aspirations. As 
might be expected from his practical and simple way 
of taking all questions, his creed was short and 
simple : 

"My political faith," he wrote, "lies between two 
vicious extremes, democracy and absolute authority, each 
of which I detest the more because it tends to reach into 
the other. I do not object to a good constitutional mon- 
archy, but prefer a conservative republic, where intelli- 
gence and character, and not numbers hold the reins of 
power." ^ 

And again: 

'' Our safety is in the development and use of the states- 
manship latent among us, and long kept latent by the 

1 Letter to Abbe H. R. Ctisgrain, May 9, 1875. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 279 

perverted action of our political machinery. . . . 'Let 
the best rule ' is the maxim of aristocracy ; * let the best 
serve ' is the maxim of the only healthful and permanent 
democracy. Who are the best ? They are gone ; their 
race has died out. Surely as effect follows cause, for a half 
century they have withered and dwindled away. The 
race, we mean of legislators and statesmen, minds trained 
to apply great principles to practice, to grapple with great 
affairs, to guide the nation with a wise and temperate 
vigor along the giddy heights of that grand destiny which 
awaited her, and perhaps awaited her in vain. When 
will such men return ? AVlien a deep and abiding sense 
of our deep need of them has seized and possessed the 
national heart, when the fallacies that have deluded us so 
long shall be thrown from us as debasing and perilous 
illusions, and the national mind rises to a true conception 
of republican freedom." ^ 

The saviours of civilization were thus to be leaders 
of ability and worth, men who could direct the masses 
with wisdom, successfully oppose both selfish dema- 
gogues and selfish capitalists, serve the nation as 
civic officials, warriors, and statesmen, and raise the 
national ambition above mere material interests. He 
manifestly sketched his ideal of healthy national 
growth in thus speaking of England: 

"Through centuries of striving she had advanced from 
stage to stage of progress, deliberate and calm, never 
breaking with her past, but making each fresh gain the 
base of a new success, enlarging popular liberties while 

1 Article in Boston Daily Advertiser, July, 1863. 



280 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

bating nothing of that height and force of individual de- 
velopment which is the brain and heart of civilization." * 

In 1862 he wrote this wise counsel for our own guid- 
ance, counsel that recent events and the passage of 
years only makes more valuable : 

'^If the people will learn that no expansion of territory, 
no accumulation of wealth, no growth of population, can 
compensate for the decline of individual greatness, if they 
can learn to recognize the reality of superior minds, and 
to feel that they have need of them ; to feel, too, that in 
rejecting and ignoring them they prepare the sure though 
gradual ruin of popular government, — that beneficent 
lesson would be cheaply bought by years of calamity and 
war." 

Again at the close of his life and labors he sounded 
the same manly challenge, raised the same standard 
by which we shall be judged in the procession of 
races : 

''She [the United States] has tamed the savage conti- 
nent, peopled the solitude, gathered wealth untold, waxed 
potent, imposing, redoubtable; and now it remains for 
her to prove, if she can, that the rule of the masses is 
consistent with the highest growth of the individual; that 
democracy can give the world a civilization as mature and 
pregnant, ideas as energetic and vitalizing, and types of 
manhood as lofty and strong, as any of the systems which 
it boasts to supplant." ^ 

^ The Old Regime, p. 451. 

2 Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. ii. p. 414. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 281 

2. Parkman, though much more friendly towards 
science than towards socialism, was even here not 
entirely in harmony with his times. We have seen 
that he favored the fullest development of this side 
of education, and that he enjoyed an observer's prac- 
tical knowledge of those sciences which brought him 
into contact with nature. No doubt he would have 
gained a broader general knowledge of the subject 
had his culture not been so restricted by considera- 
tions of health. But in truth he cared more for 
exact knowledge and tangible things than for specu- 
lations as to the origin of things. Evolution, and 
the philosophical investigation that has influenced so 
profoundly the course of modern life, had but little 
interest for him. In all phases of citizenship he was 
still true to his character of historian, and viewed 
scientific thought as he did other things, as one of 
the forces affecting civilization. Here came in his 
idealism, qualifying his admiration of science with 
disapproval of many of her most notable achievements 
and most potent influences. He did not look to it 
alone for the regeneration of mankind. 

He regarded the predominance of material interests 
in our national life as still another danger of great 
moment. Writing of our condition at the beginning 
of the Rebellion, he said : 

" Luxury and commerce have sometimes emasculated a 
people naturally warlike. The former has injured us only 
partially, but the spirit of trade, in the excess of its pre- 
dominance, has done us a widespread and deadly mis- 



282 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

chief. The morality of commerce has become confounded 
with universal morality, and the word 'honor,' to the 
minds of half of those who use it, means little but com- 
mercial honor. The pride of a good bargain has overborne 
the pride of manhood, and much that is vital to worth and 
nobleness is treated as illusory. So, from highest to low- 
est, this influence pervades this vigorous and practical 
race, courageous, indeed, as all roused and energetic 
peoples are, but not spurred to acts of courage by the same 
exacting and unanswerable demands which urge, on the 
one hand, ruder nations, and on the other, nations of a 
more balanced and normal civilization." ^ 

He saw that " the intellectual growth of the coun- 
try bears no proportion to its material progress." To 
give this idea a tangible illustration, we may quote 
the following passage written in 1875: 

" That the present condition and prospects of American 
literature are not very flattering will hardly be denied. 
A score or more of years ago there seemed a fair hope that 
the intellectual development of the country would not be 
absolutely disproportioned to its material growth ; but 
thus far the hope has not been fulfilled, and, relatively to 
our vast increase in wealth and population, the value, 
though not the volume of literary products is less than 
before. This proceeds, naturally enough, from several 
causes. The excitement of the war and the inflation of 
the currency, with the morbid stimulus it applied to 
trade and industry, were no doubt strong anti-literary 
influences ; but a violent impulse had been given long 
before to all kinds of material activity by the discovery of 

1 Letter to Boston Daily Advertiser, June, 1863. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 283 

gold in California. Here, more than anywhere else, be- 
gan that frenzy of speculation and that race for wealth 
which have created an atmosphere where the scholar and 
the thinker find it hard to breathe." ■■■ 

In his diaries we read his regrets that the " Yankee 
spirit of improvement," in clearing the land of forest, 
should be " destroying the chief ornament of the coun- 
try." This feeling led him almost to regret the 
s]3read of civilization over the continent, resulting in 
the extermination of the buffalo, the taming of the 
Indian, and the building of railroads. This Spartan 
sufferer had no weakness for luxuries; he liked 
simple, even primitive modes of life; preferring the 
saddle or canoe to the stage coach, and the latter to 
railway or steamboat. For all this, he was actually 
indifferent rather than antagonistic to modern im- 
provements, accepting them as conveniences, without 
giving them any thought or admiration. 

The material productions of science, however, 
roused a deeper feeling when viewed in their effects 
on our national life. 

*'Nor am I at all enthusiastic for the nineteenth cen- 
tury, many of the tendencies of which I deplore, while 
admiring much that it has accomplished. It is too demo- 
cratic and too much given to the pursuit of material inter- 
ests at the expense of intellectual and moral greatness 
which I hold to be the true [aim or end] and to which 
material progress should be but a means." ^ He depre- 

1 Review of Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific States, in 
North American Review, January, 1875, p, 34. 
* Letter to Abbe H. R. Casgrain, May 9, 1875. 



284 A LITE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

cated our ''overstraiued and morbid activity, and incessant 
tension of nerves — the men in the struggles of active 
life, the women in the ambitions, anxieties, and worries 
of social existence." 

He could not abide the acceptance of material pros- 
perity as proof of our national greatness, and no one 
irritated liim more than the man who regards them 
as the summum lonum of progress. A highly civil- 
ized man, he disliked the over-refinements and com- 
plexities of civilization. On the other hand, while 
he loved the wilderness and its adventures, and pos- 
sessed the hardihood and courage of a Boone, he 
never would have led the life of an Indian, nor 
become even a frontiersman. Wealth, especially 
when concentrated in the hands of men deficient in 
culture and public spirit, inspired him with a certain 
suspicion. He condemned our popular admiration 
for the "self-made man" and the "practical man," 
had the keenest scent for vulgarity, crudeness, pre- 
tentiousness, exaggeration, and spread-eagleism, and 
the sharpest tongue to denounce them, attributing 
them to the ignorance and complacency born of undue 
material prosperity. 

3. Of Parkman's religious opinions and feelings, 
to be dwelt on in a later chapter, it is sufficient to 
say here that his antagonism to all theological organ- 
izations and sectarian aims necessarily limited his 
influence on the public life of his generation. He 
had no interest whatever in the religious movements 
of his time, except a fear of the growing power of the 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 285 

Roman Catholic Church, and of the proposed " peace- 
ful conquest of New England " by the French Cana- 
dians under the leadership of priests. 

On other questions of the day, it is interesting to 
note his clean-cut expressions of independent opinion. 
The latest extreme form of the so-called temperance 
movement he condemned as the " corrupting farce of 
a prohibition which does not prohibit, which in large 
communities does not prevent or even diminish 
drunkenness, but which is the fruitful parent of mean- 
ness, fraud, lying, and contempt of law." 

His love for the wilderness and for certain types of 
wild men had no force in relation to the Indian 
question. He never approved of Penn's peace 
policy. 

"lu fact, the benevolent and philanthropic view of the 
American savage is for those who are beyond his reach. 
It has never yet been held by any whose wives and chil- 
dren have lived in danger of his scalping-knife." ^ 

The effort to educate Indians seemed to him to spoil 
them as wild men, at the same time failing to civilize 
them. The following passage is very characteristic 
of his love of justice and firmness in all the relations 
of life that were open to his vision : 

" A word touching our recent Indian policy. To sup- 
pose that presents, blandishments, kind treatment, even 
when not counteracted by fraud and lawlessness of white 

1 Half Century, vol. i. p. 215. 



286 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

men, can restrain these banditti [the Apaches, Comanches, 
and other tribes of Arizona and New Mexico] from molest- 
ing travellers and settlers, is a mistake. Robbery and 
murder have become to them a second nature, and, as just 
stated, a means of living. The chief enemies of peace in 
the Indian country are the philanthropist, the politician, 
and the border-ruffian ; that is to say, the combination of 
soft words with rascality and violence. An Apache, a 
Comanche, or an Arapaho neither resj)ects nor comprehends 
assurances of fraternal love. In most cases he takes them 
as an evidence of fear. The government whose emissaries 
caress him and preach to him, whose officials cheat him, 
and whose subjects murder him, is not likely to soothe 
him into the ways of peace. The man best fitted to deal 
with Indians of hostile dispositions is an honest, judicious, 
and determined soldier. To protect them from ruffians 
worse than themselves, strictly to observe every engage- 
ment, to avoid verbiage and speak on occasion with a de- 
cisive clearness absolutely free from sentimentality, to 
leave no promise and no threat unfulfilled, to visit every 
breach of peace with a punishment as prompt as circum- 
stances will permit, to dispense with courts and juries, 
and substitute a summary justice, and to keep speculators 
and adventurers from abusing them — such means as 
these on the one hand, or extermination on the otlier, will 
alone keep such tribes as the Apaches quiet. They need 
an officer equally just and vigorous ; and our regular army 
can furnish such. They need an army more numerous 
than we have at present; and its business would be to 
restrain white men no less than Indians. They need in 
the executive a courage to which democracy and the news- 
paper sensation-monger are wofully adverse. Firmness, 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 287 

consistency, and justice are indispensable in dealing with 
dangerous Indians, and so far as we fail to supply them 
we shall fail of success. Attempts at conciliation will be 
worse than useless unless there is proof, manifest to their 
savage understanding, that such attempts do not proceed 
from weakness or fear." ^ 

Feeling, as he did, that universal suffrage was a 
mistake, especially in a large and mixed population, 
he took great interest in the restriction of immigra- 
tion in order to save our institutions from any further 
strain by a "muddy tide of ignorance rolled in 
upon us." 

The anti-slavery question was by no means a burn- 
ing one with him, although he recognized "the 
sound and earnest basis of this agitation." He said 
further : 

''Some half century ago, a few devoted men began 
what seemed a desperate crusade against a tremendous 
national evil. American slavery has now passed into 
history. It died a death of violence, to our shame be it 
said; for the nation had not virtue, temperance, and wis- 
dom enough, to abolish it peacefully and harmlessly; but 
it is dead." ^ 

The war, however, aroused his utmost sympathy, 
as shown by the white-heat of his few contributions 
on the subject to the press. The Union was to be 
preserved at no matter what personal and national 

1 Keview of Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific States, in 
North American Review, January, 1875, p. 43. 

2 Failure of Universal Suffrage, p. 19. 



288 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

cost. Moreover, he regarded martial traits as the 
most essential and fundamental virtues of a manly- 
personality. 

"Since the world began, no nation has ever risen to 
a commanding eminence in the arts of peace, which has 
not at some period of its history, been redoubtable in war. 
And in every well-balanced development of nations, as of 
individuals, the warlike instinct and the military point 
of honor are not repressed and extinguished, but only 
refined and civilized. It belongs to the pedagogue, not 
to the philosopher, to declaim against them as relics of 
barbarism." These instincts, he further insisted, are 
"always strongest in the strongest and richest nature." * 

Believing that the progress and stability of civiliza- 
tion depend on force, and despising what he called 
the " milksop " principle of turning the other cheek 
also, he was yet the last man to desire an unneces- 
sary or an unjust war. 

The woman suffrage movement is the only topic 
which Parkman treated in a spirit that would seem 
to require apology or explanation on the part of his 
biographer. This remark applies chiefly to the pam- 
phlet entitled " Some of the Reasons against Woman 
Suffrage, printed at the request of an Association of 
Women." The fuller statement in his article in the 
"North American Review," October, 1879, is less 
open to criticism. It is quite unnecessary to our 
aim of portraiture to discuss his views, but his argu- 
ment is of interest as a revelation of his mental traits. 

^ Letter to the Boston Dailtj Advertiser, June, 1863. 



PARKMAN AS SEEN" IN HIS WORKS 289 

He thought that by the limitations and inabilities 
imposed on woman by sex and her maternal duties, 

''God and nature had ordained that she shall not be 
forced to join in the harsh conflicts of the world mili- 
tant;" that, considering the poor health of American 
women it is " cruel to add to the excitements which are 
wasting them other and greater excitements, and to 
cares too great for their strength other and greater 
cares. ... To hold the man responsible and yet deprive 
him of power is neither just nor rational, for the man is 
the natural head of the family, he is responsible for its 
maintenance and order; hence he ought to control the 
social and business agencies which are essential to the 
successful discharge of the trust imposed upon him. . . . 
Woman suffrage must have one of two effects : if, as 
many of its advocates complain, women are subservient to 
men, and do nothing but what they desire, then woman 
suffrage will have no other result but to increase the 
power of the other sex ; if on the other hand women vote 
as they see fit, without regarding their husbands, then 
unhappy marriages will be multiplied and divorces re- 
doubled." The danger of ''inconsiderate and rash legis- 
lation . . . would be increased immeasurably if the most 
impulsive and excitable half of humanity had an equal 
voice in the making of laws, and in the administration 
of them, — abstract right would then be made to prevail 
after a fashion somewhat startling." The better class of 
women, instead of controlling others, " will be outvoted 
in their own kitchens, without reckoning the agglomera- 
tions of poverty, ignorance, and vice, that form a start- 
ling proportion of our city populations; the female vote 

19 



290 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

would enormously increase tlie evil, for it is often more 
numerous, always more impulsive and less subject to rea- 
son, and almost devoid of the sense of responsibility. Here 
the bad politician would find his richest resources. . . . 
It is not woman's virtues that would be prominent or 
influential in the political arena; they would shun it by 
an invincible repulsion; and the opposite qualities would 
be drawn into it. The "Washington lobby has given us 
some means of judging what we may expect from the 
woman ' inside politics.' If politics are to be purified by 
artfulness, effrontery, insensibility, a pushing self-asser- 
tion, a glib tongue, then we may look for regeneration; 
for the typical female politician will be richly endowed 
with all these gifts, besides the potency of feminine 
charms aided by feminine wiles. The 'woman inside 
politics ' will not fail to make use of an influence so 
subtle and strong, and of which the management is pecu- 
liarly suited to her talents. If she is not gifted with 
charms of her own, she will have no difficulty in finding 
and using others of her sex who are. Delilah has al- 
ready spread her snares for the congressional Samson. . . . 
Woman suffragists have done nothing to prove their fit- 
ness for a share in government — not having produced a 
single sound and useful contribution to one side or the 
other of any question of current politics. ... As the ma- 
jority of women are averse to the suffrage " it should 
not be granted at the request of a minority of agita- 
tors. " All usages, laws, and institutions have risen and 
perished, and risen and perished again. Their history 
is the history of mutability itself. But from the earliest 
records of mankind down to this moment, in every race 
and every form or degree of civilization or barbarism, 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 291 

the relative position of the sexes has been essentially 
the same, with exceptions so feeble, rare and transient 
that they only prove the rule. Such permanence in the 
foundation of society, while all that rests upon it has 
passed from change to change, is proof in itself that this 
foundation lies deep in the essential nature of things ; " 
that it is unreasonable to demand woman suffrage as a 
right. " Government by doctrines of abstract right, of 
which the French Revolution set the example and bore 
the fruits, involves enormous danger and injustice. No 
political right is absolute and of universal application. 
Each has its conditions, qualifications and limitations. 
. . . E-ights may be real or unreal. Principles may be 
true or false; but even the best and truest cannot safely 
be i^ushed too far, or in the wrong direction. The 
principle of truth itself may be carried into absurdity. 
The saying is old that truth should not be spoken at 
all times; and those whom a sick conscience worries 
into habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and 
nuisances. . . . The voting of a large non-combatant class 
is dangerous to civil harmony." The "suffragists' idea 
of government is not practical, but utterly unpractical, 
not American but French. It is that government of 
abstractions and generalities which found its realiza- 
tion in the French Revolution, and its apostle in the 
depraved and half-crazy man of genius, Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau. . . . Out of the wholesome fruit of the earth, 
and the staff of life itself, the perverse chemistry of man 
distils deleterious vapors which, condensed and bottled, 
exalt his brain with glorious fantasies, and then leave 
him in the mud. So it is with the unhappy suffragists. 
From the sober words of our ancestors they extract 



292 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

the means of mental inebriety. . . . The question is, 
whether the persistency of a few agitators shall plunge 
us blindfold into the most reckless of all experiments; 
whether we shall adopt this supreme device for develop- 
ing the defects of women, and demolish their real power 
to build an ugly mockery instead. For the sake of 
womanhood let us hope not. ... In the full and normal 
development of womanhood lie the best interests of the 
world. Let us labor earnestly for it; and, that we may 
not labor in vain, let us save women from the barren 
perturbations of American politics. Let us respect 
them; and, that we may do so, let us pray for deliver- 
ance from female suffrage." 

Both advocates and opponents felt that the general 
tone of this pamphlet did Parkman injustice. It 
does, indeed, surprise one by the absence of the im- 
partiality and thoroughness of his historical works, 
by its lack of discrimination as to the different classes 
of woman suffragists, and by the roughness and dis- 
courtesy in some of its remarks on women. But his 
opinions and feelings as to woman, her development 
and her rights as a whole, are not to be confounded 
with his hatred and fear of woman suffrage. In all 
these matters his views were unconsciously influenced 
somewhat by his personal tastes; for here, as else- 
where, his preferences were distinct and strong, being 
quite opposed to the typical " strongminded " and 
oratorical woman. His social environment and 
family traditions supported his view of woman's limi- 
tations and his antipathy for everything connected 
with the agitation on her behalf. This pamphlet 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 293 

brought upon him some sharp criticism; but he thus 
recorded his indifference to such attacks : 

"I am occupied as usual with historical matters, varied 
with other avocations, including (in a literary way) some 
reviews that have brought as I expected, a beehive about 
my ears, or rather several beehives, or waspnests, com- 
posed of ultramontane catholics, ultra democrats, and 
woman suffragists. Though their buzzing is great and 
furious, I do not yet iind that they sting." ^ 

The other side of his attitude towards woman's 
functions and rights is plain for those who knew him; 
but the stranger who should read only this pamphlet 
might easily be misled as to his total view on this 
question. The exigencies of an argument which had 
to be brought into small compass probably constrained 
him to dwell rather on the incapacities of women 
than on their abilities and worth. He does express 
here and there, however, his aims and hopes for 
women in no uncertain terms; and his demands are 
both fundamental and far-reaching. Here is his 
general estimate of their importance in civilization : 

''They can, if they will, create and maintain higher 
standards of thought and purpose, raise the whole tone 
of national life, and give our civilization the fulness 
that it lacks; for if they raise themselves they will 
infallibly raise the men with them." 

He believed that the hope of civilization rests upon 
the most perfect discharge of the maternal functions, 
that early marriages and large families are most 
1 To B. A. Gould, Feb. 1, 1880. 



294 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PAEKMAN 

desirable, and that the home duties of a woman leave 
little time for any other labors. His friendships with 
noble women, and their devotion to him, are unques- 
tionable proofs of his chivalric appreciation. What 
can a man say stronger than this: "Truth itself 
would seem hardly worth the pursuit if women were 
not in the world." 

In examining Parkman's attitude towards these 
topics of the times, we have seen something of his 
intellectual traits; but perhaps we may still pursue 
this subject for a moment, to get a more intimate 
glimpse of his general spirit and moral sensibilities. 
He differed from many writers of his time in having 
a definite philosophy of civilization. The laissez- 
aller policy was completely foreign to him. His 
philosoj^hy and hopes of civilization were based on 
his dominant traits so fully discussed in this book, 
and his philosophy of life. He took all questions 
simply and directly, seeking always the practical, 
positive and exact. He was strongly opposed to 
many elements of philanthropic reform, and could 
not accept, either for himself or others, any project 
that put into the second rank the virtues of independ- 
ence, industry, and honesty. Indeed he opposed 
himself so bluntly and broadly to all philanthroiDic 
reforms and their advocates as almost to appear in- 
different to the welfare of the race. The isolation in 
which he was compelled to live may have had some- 
thing to do with this habitual mode of thought ; for 
few men of equal eminence ever had so little personal 
or intellectual contact with the liberal leaders of their 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 295 

time. As heredity made him stronger in antipathies 
than in admirations and sympathies, he was necessa- 
rily a severe critic of life. His own asperity was 
hateful to him, but he could not cut loose from that 
side of his nature. Helped by the warmth of per- 
sonal contact and friendship, we find him judging 
men charitably and generously ; but in the absence of 
this humane influence he was neither charitable nor 
generous. He did not take at their best either causes 
or champions that he disapproved; on the contrary, 
his keen eye never failed to find some personal weak- 
ness in a reformer, some false assumption or some 
exaggeration; and he held this up to view with 
caustic humor. Excepting a vile politician, no one 
repelled him more than a reformer marked by extreme 
views and eccentric conduct. Those from whom he 
differed in questions of life and morals often got 
themselves characterized as "fools." It seems but 
just to point out that Parkman's controversial 
papers offer the only exception to the kindliness 
and urbanity of his manners. Those of his read- 
ers who feel that he was lacking in courtesy and 
fairness, will understand him better if they remem- 
ber the continual inward pressure under which he 
wrote. 

A sense of civic duty made him ride hard against 
idealists and reformers. He considered that tran- 
scendentalism was weakening to common-sense and 
dangerous to practical aims. " The ideal reformer, " 
said he, "is generally a nuisance when he tries to 



296 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

deal with the broad and many-sided questions in- 
volved in the government of nations." 

But with all his vehemence Parkman made no 
personal enemies; he was too considerate to talk of 
people lightly, and he despised gossij); his censure, 
even the most energetic, was not only free from any 
mean or personal motives, but made distinctly for the 
elevation of life and character. 

Parkman combined two sharply opposed beings, 
— a conservative and a liberal. In the firmness of 
his conservatism he might be likened to a statue; 
but the marble was aglow with a fiery zeal for growth. 
In him conservatism was the resistant medium which 
brought his spirit to expression, defining his aspira- 
tions nearly as well as direct statements of liberalism 
would have done. Environment, moreover, had done 
little for a not very elastic nature. So he continued 
to live, with his usual loyalty and persistence, faithful 
to the traditions of his family and community. His 
capacity for culture may be thought to have failed in 
giving him breadth of sympathy in citizenship ; never- 
theless, it was effective even while not changing the 
lines of his hopes for humanity. It could have been 
no common conservatism that mastered a man of 
such courage and initiative, shown not by ventures 
but by opposition to ventures. He instinctively 
regarded changes as evils. And yet, despite the 
historical cast of his mind, his conservatism was 
unpoetized by any sentimental regard for tradition; 
an idea did not attract him because of its antiquity 



PARKMAN AS SEEN IN HIS WORKS 297 

but because of tbe truth, it contained. Though pessi- 
mistic he was not a pessimist in the depressing, philo- 
sophic sense; his pessimism sprang from doubts not 
of divine but of democratic wisdom ; while especially 
hating what he stigmatized as " the senseless optimism 
which leads so many Americans to imagine that all 
will go well in the end, whatever they may do or fail 
to do; and that our Ship of State cannot be wrecked, 
whether the crew do their duty or not," ^ he recog- 
nized that " Faith is indispensable to all achievement ; 
but it must not quarrel with common sense, nor walk 
with eyes shut." He was a fighting, inspiring pes- 
simist, always ready to lead even a forlorn hope. His 
essential liberality was no less real because of its con- 
finement to certain lines. While his bugbear was the 
levelling-down tendencies of modern democratic in- 
stitutions, his hopes of civilization were unshakable, 
standing on the worth of the individual citizen. 
His liberality was intensely earnest in desiring what- 
ever favors the growth of character. With his love 
of nature — not stopping at the edge of the forest — ■ 
he wished people to enjoy the utmost freedom for 
growth, each according to his individual capacities. 

Parkman's hopes, then, rested on good birth, the 
best culture, the subordination of materialism, and the 
leadership of worthy statesmen. For these things he 
worked with all the enthusiasm of his nature, along 
the lines of a conservative and high-minded student 
of history and of life. 

1 Our Common Schools, p. 1. 



^att III 

SPIRITUAL GROWTH 



CHAPTER XII 

Parkman's greatest triumph was not the writing 
of books, but the self-command acquired in remould- 
ing his nature to his conditions. For the peculiar 
conditions of his nervous system made everything 
depend upon the issue, — not only the execution of 
his literary project, but also his physical health, his 
sanity, life itself. This contest involved all the 
forces of his being ; it showed the most striking traits 
of his character; it occasioned the most impressive 
experiences of his career ; it moulded his daily life ; 
it modified his spiritual and intellectual growth ; and 
it determined to a certain degree the methods, limits, 
and qualities of his work. I am therefore reluctantly 
compelled to ignore his distaste for even the mention 
of his personal health, and give some space to its 
consideration. 

Self-mastery was doubly necessary, both from the 
nature of his maladies and from the need of extreme 
caution in using whatever strength they left him. 
He literally had to remake himself. 



Francis Parkman. 

From a Photograph. 



vr^?*^- 




"■o^yrieht. ^^jp. hy ZuUe., £roii>n-.& C^ 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 299 

Parkman was a pathetic figure to those wlio knew 
his life, though nothing could be farther from his 
wishes than to appear in any such character. Let 
us rehearse for a moment the advantages of his 
career, which made this pathos the more striking. 
He had a boundless ambition, and his equipment for 
its fulfilment was all that could be desired. Birth 
and fortune had united to give him all the advan- 
tages derivable from a good social position ; he had 
discovered the bent of his tastes and gifts at a very- 
early age, and followed them closely with zeal and 
intelligence ; he had directed his own education with 
the utmost economy of forces to secure the special 
culture needed for his chosen labors; travel had 
bestowed inestimable opportunities for observing life 
and character; the stimulus of public appreciation 
coming early had spurred him on to complete achieve- 
ment; domestic circumstances enabled him to de- 
vote himself wholly to his work; he had the help 
of a great theme that entirely commanded his sym- 
pathies, and focussed all his powers throughout life 
on a field of definite extent; finally, he possessed in 
generous measure the moral and intellectual qualities 
needed for the execution of his task. It would 
seem that nothing could have been lacking in the 
happy prospect opened before him. 

But almost from the start his progress was made 
difficult, even dangerous, by shadows about him as 
strong as the light above. He soon became not only 
unable to use his eyes with safety, but he was weak- 



300 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

enecl by sufferings that would have paralyzed the 
powers and courage of most men. "The enemy," 
like his Iroquois, often held him prisoner, and meas- 
ured out to him with pitiless atrocity just as much 
torture as he could endure. Parkman never talked 
of these trials ; he hardly more than hints at them in 
his autobiographic paper, to which he confided more 
than he ever said to even his most intimate friends. 
Our only way of realizing the strain he successfully 
bore is to note the strength of the faculties opposed by 
his infirmities. We shall see that nearly every fun- 
damental tendency of his nature was refused its 
normal action by physical and mental conditions of 
the most exasperating and discouraging kind. These 
deep-reaching privations touched the very heart of 
the vigorous man, the social friend, and the ambitious 
author. His personal inner life for a long while 
lacked, to a painful degree, the unity and harmony 
that marked so strongly his literary career. 

Some of Parkman's strongest characteristics were 
not shown in early youth. His teacher described 
him as a " quiet, gentle, and docile boy; " this general 
character, so opposed to his subsequent mercurial 
activity, may have been due to his lack of abounding 
health at that time. Patience was not one of his 
natural traits. Nor was he more truthful and mag- 
nanimous than the average boy of his community. 
We must note another youthful tendency, and one 
that was not curbed until his moral sense had gained 
the fullest development: a domineering spirit. This 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 301 

tendency was more an expression of his independence 
of judgment and force of will, than any mere disposi- 
tion to tyrannize or command. A masterful spirit at 
all periods of his life, he never interfered with the 
freedom of others, or followed petty aims or personal 
gratifications. Without this quality of strength and 
mastery he could not have reached his goal ; and he 
seems never to have allowed even its defects to grow 
beyond the clearest and most imperative needs of his 
condition and work. 

As we often have occasion to say, Parkman's 
ruling ideal was manliness. It is not easy to give 
the fullest impression of this quality as expressed in 
him. It was more of the intellectual and physical 
or martial type than of the spiritual. Yet fate denied 
him physical activity and called upon him for the 
utmost strength of many spiritual qualities. He 
has told us that his first boyish fancy was "for a 
life of action and death in battle," and we know that 
the severest disappointment of his life was his inability 
to enter the army during our civil war. Rarely in 
his books does he give any expression to his own 
feelings and tastes, but he revealed one of the deep- 
est recesses of his nature in speaking, in "The 
Jesuits," of Maisonneuve, — "The religion which 
animated him had not destroyed the soldierly pride 
which takes root so readily and so strongly in a manly 
nature." 

Many of Parkman's traits of mind and character 
were distinctly those of a soldier. He liked a fight 



302 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKxMAN 

for its own sake, and for the energy, courage, and 
strength it called forth. Especially did he warm to 
it if the triumph of justice and freedom were helped 
thereby. He showed particular pleasure when his 
little granddaughter beat off two ruffian boys who 
tried to take a sled from one of her playmates. He 
never forgave the Quakers for refusing to fight the 
Indians and defend the country. A newspaper arti- 
cle by him contains the following : 

''In every well-balanced development of nations as of 
individuals, the warlike instinct and the military point 
of honor are not repressed and extinguished, but only 
refined and civilized. It belongs to the pedagogue, not 
to the philosopher, to declaim against them as relics of 
barbarism." 

He loved the experiences and the objective elements 
of a military life, — the activity, the adventure, 
hardship, danger. In a larger view of his mental 
attitude, his papers on Suffrage show that he counted 
a great deal on physical force in government ; by his 
temperament and his study of history, he naturally 
exalted war to a very important rSle in civilization. 
Moreover, he regarded war as a valuable aid in the 
development of personal and national character. I 
do not recall in his writing any recognition of its evil 
effects on men. Despite all this, however, we can- 
not find in him any admiration for the bully or the 
" jingo." 

But Parkman's nature had even more of the mili- 
tant than these feelings and opinions would indicate. 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 303 

Many of his talents fitted him especially for a mar- 
tial career. In the first place, he possessed in their 
greatest force five of the most fundamental requisites 
of a commander: practical wisdom, energy, courage, 
prudence, and intellectual power. His love of order 
and his spirit as shown in self-discipline, promised 
well for the discipline of an army. Thanks to his 
exceptional judgment of men, he would have been 
most capable in selecting subordinates. Although 
without the overflowing personal magnetism that 
quickly wins popularity on the largest scale and in- 
fuses the masses with enthusiasm, yet he had the 
dignity, the ability, and the genial sincerity that win 
friendship and inspire at last the fullest confidence of 
a people. As for the tenacity and firmness of pur- 
pose required to follow a plan to its ultimate issue, 
no one could give more unquestionable assurance. 

When the civil war caused him to look up from his 
books, Parkman longed for a chance to serve his 
country and try his hand. Unable to go to the war 
himself, he gave vent to his feelings by showing a 
keen interest in young men who could go, and by 
writing, now and then, for the press a piece that 
glowed with the fire and elevation of his patriotism. 
He always remembered with bitterness his inability, 
and closed his autobiography with an expression of 
this disappointment, in words that suggest a deeper 
meaning for himself than a reference to the needs of 
the hour: "Irksome," he said, as may have been his 
infirmities, they were "far less oppressive than the 



304 A LIFE OF FRAXCIS PARKMAN 

necessity they involved of being busied with the past 
when the present has claims so urgent, and holding 
the pen with a hand that should have grasped the 
sword." 

His love of action always pulled against his love of 
study. Such seemingly incompatible passions are 
rarely seen together in such force. Even in his col- 
lege days, while still in good health and much inter- 
ested in physical culture, he was remarked as a man 
of retirement and industry, a reserved, brooding stu- 
dent, who seldom invited any one to his room, and 
at the same time an impetuous, social youth. But 
action was his first instinctive mode of expression, 
his chief pleasure in life. And it was, moreover, a 
kind of abnormal, physical necessity, as well as a 
propensity of his mind. An incident of the Oregon 
Trail journey shows this trait very plainly. One 
night when Tete Rouge came to the tent and said 
that Indians were stealing the horses, Parkman 
seized his rifle and rushed out, erect as a target, 
instead of following the more cautious tactics usual 
with men of the prairies. He did so, not because 
he was ignorant of the risk, but, having a courage 
utterly indifferent to danger, he followed his first 
and strongest impulse. Idleness and confinement 
were therefore the hardest experience life could im- 
pose. Every fibre of the man recoiled from such 
an existence, and he abominated the spirit of resig- 
nation. He tells of the trial in these words to a 
friend, written in 1849: 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 305 

" From a complete and ample experience of both, I can 
bear witness that no amount of physical pain is so intol- 
erable as the position of being stranded, and doomed to 
lie rotting for year after year. However, I bave not yet 
abandoned any plan which I ever formed, and I have no 
intention of abandoning any." 

The tension of the strain put upon him is well told 
by Vassall Morton when confined in an Austrian 
dungeon, p. 208: 

"It is but a weak punishment to which Milton dooms 
his ruined angel. Action, enterprise, achievement, — a 
hell like that is heaven to the cells of Ehrenberg. He 
should have chained him to a rock, and left him alone to 
the torture of his own thoughts; the unutterable agonies 
of a mind preying on itself for want of other sustenance. 
Action! mured in this dungeon, the soul gasps for it as 
the lungs for air. Action, action, action! — all in all! 
What is life without it ? A marsh, a quagmire, a rotten, 
stagnant pool. It is its own reward. The chase is all; 
the prize nothing." 

And how personal are his reflections on the prospect 
of no escape from his misfortunes : 

" Yet it is something that I can still find heart to face 
my doom ; that there are still moments when I dare to 
meet this death-in-life, this slow-consuming horror, face 
to face, and look into all its hideousness without shrink- 
ing. To creep on to my end through years of slow decay, 
mind and soul famishing in solitude, sapped and worn, 
eaten and fretted away, by the droppings of lonely 

20 



306 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

thought, till I find my rest at last under these cursed 
stones ! " 

The passage is only too intimate and painful to any 
one who knows Parkman's experience and character. 
Yet there was no melancholy in his temperament, 
and his consequent cheerfulness sweetened his 
fortitude. 

Parkman's love of study was second only to his 
love of action. Lowell saw deeply into his nature 
in speaking of his " aptitude for culture." And Park- 
man undoubtedly recognized his own gifts and ten- 
dencies very clearly; he makes the woman who has 
the most insight and knowledge of Vassall Morton 
say to him (p. 372), " You seem to me a person with 
a singular capacity of growth. You push forth fibres 
into every soil, and draw nutriment from sources 
most foreign to you." His weakness of eyes and 
brain were thus one of the hardest spiritual trials he 
could meet. And they must have been particularly 
exasperating in his special pursuit, for historical 
research is hunting the needle in a haystack. 

But strong as was his love of study, the social 
tendencies, too, had their way. He was never a 
recluse in spirit, but derived the most beneficial 
stimulus from society, being specially sensitive to the 
charms of women. It was no light matter for this 
virile man, this social being, this hater of asceticism, 
to be so often restricted to the privations of a monastic 
rule. 

Those of us who knew him only in the latter part 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 307 

of his life, when he had been reduced to habits of 
quietude, find it difficult to realize the full force of 
his ardor. The quiet, reserved manner, the firm 
stand on common sense, the conservative prudence in 
all things, the serene self-command in daily life might 
well deceive even a close observer. His repression 
of native impetuosity was the more remarkable since 
this trait was reinforced by great nervous irritability, 
and this again increased by continued insomnia. 
After ill health had denied him freedom in exercise, 
his excess of vital force could find vent only in out- 
bursts of strong language. Mr. Frothingham said of 
him: 

" Again and again lie had to restrain the impulse to 
say vehement things, or to do violent deeds without the 
least provocation, but he maintained so absolutely his 
moral self-control that none but the closest observer would 
notice any deviation from the most perfect calm and 
serenity." 

Nervousness was never allowed to pass into external 
agitation, or the irritability seen in so many high- 
strung and able men. Parkman spared himself and 
others such waste of vitality and of peace. Fortitude 
guided by common sense certainly proved his salva- 
tion, in enabling him to plan his labors, husband his 
forces, regulate his habits of living, and make possi- 
ble the execution of his work. Few men have been 
so severely tested and have shown these virtues raised 
to so high a power. His fortitude seems to have been 



308 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

equal to any emergency. Perhaps it received early 
stimulus from the many examples of endurance he 
met in the study of his historical personages, — the 
Indian singing his death-song throughout mortal 
tortures, the missionary meeting martyrdom with 
enthusiasm, the endurance of the heroic Jogues, La 
Salle, and many others. 

Parkman's philosophy of life should be included in 
this account of his basic qualities and their relation to 
his experience. The average man can live from 
day to day, blindly obedient to his instincts or am- 
bitions, long before he sees his ideal and grasps it. 
He is the common sailor, feeling no responsibility be- 
yond the hour of his watch. But a man of Park- 
man's self-commanding nature must have a port of 
destination and a compass for directing his course. 
Referring to his labors as related to his health, he 
said: "Under the most favorable conditions, it was 
a slow and doubtful navigation, beset with reefs 
and breakers, demanding a constant lookout and a 
constant throwing of the lead." These words are 
more or less applicable to the dangers he was likely 
to meet in his mental and moral growth. What could 
a man do, destined to such a voyage under such 
clouds and storms, without a beckoning ideal above 
the mists! 

And what was Parkman's philosophy of life ? We 
ask the question with eagerness, but we cannot 
hope to get complete satisfaction in the matter. His 
habitual reserve kept him from talking on a subject 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 309 

SO intimate; and the only written statement of his 
philosophy is this passage from his diary of 1846, 
written at St. Louis, just before starting on the 
Oregon Trail journey. " The true philosophy of life 
is to seize with a ready and strong hand all the 
good in it, and to bear its inevitable evils as calmly 
and carelessly as may be." This creed, in its general 
lightness of tone, is not quite in accord with his life 
and character taken as a whole ; but it was probably 
true to his hopes and aims in the full vigor and 
freedom of youth. We cannot help observing, how- 
ever, that it points somewhat away from his self- 
sacrificing devotion to duty, and sounds a false note 
in regard to his earnestness. He took life too 
seriously, albeit calmly, to allow of any carelessness, 
even at that age. Yet the profession is interesting 
as furnishing us with his moral starting-point in 
youth. 

The whole aspect of life changed a few years later, 
when disease had fastened upon him, bringing so 
much pain and such discouraging obstacles to the 
attainment of his ambition. But there is no evidence 
that he added anything to his earliest creed except- 
ing a greater emphasis of endurance. He sat down 
in his study to his trials and labors with a clenched 
fist and a set jaw, and took as his motto " Grin and 
bear it." This motto expressed fully the grimness of 
his experience and the resistant force of his manhood. 
Thenceforth it remained his essential philosophy of 
life, though in later years it was refined by the devel- 



810 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

opment of a gentler spirit. The next glimpse we 
have of his inward feelings was given me by a friend 
who remembered a conversation with him on ship- 
board while crossing the Atlantic in 1858. Parkman 
then expressed a perfect conviction that happiness is 
not to be expected in this world. Nothing was said 
of the hereafter. The last evidence of his philo- 
sophic standpoint is furnished by a remark made only 
a year or two before his death. Reading the Thoughts 
of M. Aurelius Antoninus, he said: "That's about 
as good a philosophy of life as you can get." This 
passing remark was taken as an unusual confidence 
by the daughter to whom he spoke, and from him 
it indeed meant volumes. Mr. Frothingham said: 
" The Stoics never had a nobler disciple than Francis 
Parkman." This is very true in many ways, yet not 
in all. Parkman must have had little interest in the 
theories and abstractions on which the Stoics estab- 
lished their physical, theological, and ethical princi- 
ples, though he found himself at home in the solid 
elements of their purely practical morality. He was 
closest to them in his love of their four cardinal vir- 
tues, — " wisdom, or the knowledge of good and evil ; 
justice, or the giving to every man his due; forti- 
tude, or the enduring of labor and pain ; and temper- 
ance, which is moderation in all things." He eagerly 
accepted their large conception that the end of man 
is to live in conformity with nature, but was utterly 
opposed to some of their chief aims. Just because 
he agreed that we should conform to nature, he prob- 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 311 

ably denied that we should be indifferent to pleasure 
and pain, and despised any man for being or trying to 
be devoid of passion. To him feeling was the central 
force in character. Instead, then, of accepting the 
passive theory that all things in life are governed by 
unavoidable necessity, he believed in free will and 
the power of men to shape events. By all his chief- 
est virtues he was more Spartan than Stoic. 

Parkman apparently derived little or no support 
from religion in his struggle for self-mastery. None 
of his writings contain any expression of religious 
aspirations or reflections ; he was a stranger to relig- 
ious emotion, so far as we can judge ; and he never 
ceased to be more or less in antagonism towards the 
clergy in general, towards all theological organiza- 
tions, towards the spiritual elements of life and char- 
acter, even taken independently of any religious 
method of culture. Mr. Frothingham says : 

"Parkman belonged rather to the ethical than to the 
spiritual order of men, — those who are so admirably 
described by Eev. James Martineau in his discourse on 
the ' Christian Doctrine of Merit.' ' Till somebody has 
a conscience, nobody can feel a law. Accordingly, we 
everywhere meet with a higher order of men, who not 
only comprehend the wishes, but respect the rights of 
others; who are ruled, not by expectation without, but 
by the sense of obligation within; who do, not the agree- 
able, but the just; and even amid the storm of public 
rage, can stand fast with rooted foot and airy brow, like 
the granite mountain in the sea. Noble, however, as 



812 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

this fouBdation of uprightness always is, there may arise 
from it a self-estimate too proud and firm. If the stern 
consciousness of personal worth have no kindling of 
diviner aspiration, it will give the lofty sense of personal 
merit that makes the stoic and misses the saint. We do 
nothing well till we know our worth ; nothing best till 
we forget it.' " 

Parkman was more a man of action and observa- 
tion than of worship, — at any shrine whatsoever, 
whether that of nature, art, humanity, or religion. 
He would thus naturally remain on the outskirts, 
mostly a spectator of religious movements. And yet 
there was a religious side to his nature. It may 
be said that he moved on with his times in reli- 
gious opinions. He was one of many distinguished 
New Englanders, descendants of clergymen, who in 
their personal development went through the same 
religious evolution that has been seen in society. 
Parkman began with the early Unitarian opinions 
found in Channing; then he embraced the more 
natural and manly religion of Parker; and he ended 
in the agnosticism that makes it impossible to sub- 
scribe to any definite statement regarding the Un- 
known. His attitude is shown by this bit of intimate 
conversation with his sister Eliza. One day when 
they were rowing on Jamaica Pond she said: "If I 
should be asked about your religious beliefs, it seems 
to me I might say that you are a reverent Agnostic." 
"Yes, that's about it." 

He gave a fuller statement in the following letter, 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 313 

written in September, 1887, on the reception of a 
book entitled " The Safe Side ": 

" The opinion that Christ was not a person of super- 
human origin has been embraced of late years by many 
thoughtful men and has been discussed in many places, 
sometimes by writers with knowledge and reflection, and 
sometimes by those indifferently provided with either. 
It seems to me that the world has outgrown the dogmatic 
part of Christianity which has certainly been the source 
of misery enough in the past — especially the doctrine 
of exclusive salvation which is the main source of 
persecution. 

" But when one compares Christianity on its ethical 
side with all other religious systems, with the partial 
exception of Buddhism, one cannot but feel that whether 
we believe in its supernatural origin or not, it is to be 
accepted with a reverent gratitude as a vast boon to 
mankind." 

It is evident that his interest in religion was limited 
chiefly to its ethics. He very rarely refers to religion 
in his books, even in the history of Canada, which 
turns so largely on this element. We find no more 
than a bare reference to it now and then, — as " the 
great principles of Christian truth, "i or "that prin- 
ciple of self-abnegation which is the life of true reli- 
gion, and which is vital, no less, to the highest forms 
of heroism. "2 Here we catch the personal note, the 
reflection of his ideal and his experience. 

Despite his agnosticism, however, and although 

1 The Jesuits, p. 146. 2 /^jj.^ p. 109. 



814 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

there is no writing to support the opinion, I think he 
believed in the government of the universe by a power 
that directs life continually to better ends. He said 
in a letter, "My faith, such as it is, is strong and 
earnest; "1 and he is reported as believing that the 
possibilities of a future life were a sufficient motive 
for striving to develop the best possible character. 

It may be interesting now to glance at his philoso- 
phy from the opposite standpoint, and see it crystal- 
lized in practical virtues. In the following passage, 
summing up the qualities of his ideal hero, Vassall 
Morton, 2 he also presents to any one who knew 
Parkman an autobiographic sketch of the most im- 
pressive and touching veracity. 

'^ Manhood, the proudest of all possessions to a man, is 
that unflinching quality, which, strong in generous 
thought and high purpose, bears onward towards its 
goal, knowang no fear but the fear of God; wise, pru- 
dent, calm, yet daring and hoping all things ; not dis- 
mayed by reverses, nor elated by success, never bending 
nor receding; wearying out ill fortune by undespairing 
constancy; unconquered by pain or sorrow, or deferred 
hope; fiery in attack, steadfast in resistance, unshaken 
in the front of death; and when courage is vain, and 
hope seems folly, when crushing calamity j^resses it to 
the earth, and the exhausted body will no longer obey 
the still undaunted mind, then putting forth its hardest, 
saddest heroism, the unlaurelled heroism of endurance, 
patiently biding its time." 

1 To Abbe Casgrain, Feb. 13, 1868. 2 p. 302. 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 315 

To the student of his life the most interesting 
writing left by the historian is a fragment of an 
autobiographic letter written in 1868 to his friend 
the late Dr. George E. Ellis. Parkman was going 
abroad for medical advice and historical research. 
His health was such that he feared he might not be 
spared to complete his series of works. He then 
wrote this paper, sealed it up, and inscribed it " Not 
to be used during my life." The following note 
inclosed with it explains some of the motives from 
which the paper sprang: 

50 Chestnut St., 28 Nov. 1868. 

My dear Friend, — Running my eye over this paper, 
I am more than ever struck with its egoism, which makes 
it totally unfit for any eye but that of one in close per- 
sonal relations with me. 

It resulted from a desire — natural, perhaps, but which 
may just as well be suppressed — to make known the 
extreme difficulties which have reduced to very small 
proportions what might otherwise have been a good meas- 
ure of achievement. Having once begun it, I went on 
with it, though convinced that it was wholly unsuited to 
see the light. 

Physiologically considered, the case is rather curious. 
My plan of life from the first was such as would have 
secured great bodily vigor in nineteen cases out of 
twenty, and was only defeated in its aim by an inborn 
irritability of constitution which required gentler treat- 
ment than I gave it. If I had my life to live over again, 
I would follow exactly the same course again, only with 
less vehemence. Very cordially, 

r. Parkman. 



316 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

The autobiographical fragment is considered by 
some of his friends to be a regrettable production. 
They think it gives an impression of morbidness 
quite foreign to the writer's nature and presence; 
and they regret the publication of such intimate de- 
tails of his physical and mental condition. The 
paper reflects the self-consciousness and introspection 
common to New Englanders. Both Puritan repres- 
sion and Southern impulse contended for the control 
of this man's pen. But the morbidness comes from 
the facts related and the inevitable apprehensions of 
the hour, rather than from any morbidness of temper- 
ament. As for the personal details, they were much 
better explained by his own hand than by any other ; 
besides, they were quite indispensable to one of his 
aims in writing the paper, namely, to make known 
the gravity of the difficulties that had so retarded 
the progress of his work, and that might prevent its 
completion. For it may be noted that he had abstained 
from making any appeal to the sympathy of the 
public, to its lenience in judging his work, on the 
score of his infirmities ; these are barely hinted at in 
a preface or two, as an explanation of the delays in 
publishing the successive volumes of his series. The 
paper is largely a pathological document that he be- 
lieved might be of use in the future. We must 
admit, however, that it seems somewhat out of keep- 
ing with his general reserve, and his strong distaste 
for any approach to the egotistic. And there is to be 
noted the additional fact that he wrote a second paper 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 317 

in 1886 of the same character; this one he wished 
to be given, after his death, to the Massachusetts 
Historical Society. With his remarkable memory it 
is hardly possible that he could have forgotten the 
existence of the first one. Perhaps he regarded its 
preservation in any private hands as less certain than 
in the archives of this Society. These papers seem to 
me to have had still another source in a motive very 
natural to a man of his pride and integrity. He de- 
sired, in case of not being spared to finish his task, to 
make sure of his clearance from the slightest suspi- 
cion of having done less than his utmost. At all 
events, we may be thankful for so full a note of 
his personality and inner experiences. Still another 
word may preface it. His most insidious enemy was 
brain trouble. His physician in Paris, the most 
noted specialist of his day, had said that he might 
go insane, and that his cure was extremely doubt- 
ful. The wisdom of making known this diagnosis 
to the patient has been questioned ; but it was per- 
haps the only course, in view of the precautions that 
had to be an important element of his daily life. 
In his autobiography he speaks of these medical 
opinions and his danger in the jocose way frequent 
with him in mentioning even his worst condition. 
But the matter inevitably weighed at times upon his 
mind. He occasionally expressed wonder at not 
going insane with so much nervous exhaustion from 
insomnia; and he asked one or two intimate literary 
friends to watch for signs of mental disorder in his 



318 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PAROIAN 

writings. His French physicians were all the more 
justified in their apprehensions by their ignorance of 
the New England character. They could not con- 
ceive of a man with a will and a power of self-control 
equal to any trial, however severe or protracted. 

Although we have made several extracts from this 
production, its importance justifies us in presenting 
it now entire. When the package of posthumous 
manuscript was opened, it lacked the first seven 
pages, which for some reason Parkman had decided 
to reserve. The story begins abruptly thus: 

''Allusion was made at the outset to obstacles which 
have checked the progress of the work, if the name of 
obstacles can be applied to obstructions at times impass- 
able and of such a nature that even to contend against 
them would have been little else than an act of self- 
destruction. The case in question is certainly an excep- 
tional one; but as it has analogies with various other 
cases, not rare under the stimulus of our social and 
material influences, a knowledge of it may prove of use. 
For this as for other reasons, the writer judges it expedi- 
ent to state it in full, though in doing so much personal 
detail must needs be involved. 

" His childhood was neither healthful nor buoyant. 
His boyhood though for a time active, was not robust, 
and at the age of eleven or twelve he conceived a 
vehement liking for pursuits, a devotion to which at 
that time of life far oftener indicates a bodily defect 
than a mental superiority. Chemical experiment was 
his favorite hobby, and he pursued it with a tenacious 
eagerness which, well guided, would have led to some 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 319 

acquaintance with the rudiments of the science, but 
which in fact served little other purpose than injuring 
him by confinement, poisoning him with noxious gases, 
and occasionally scorching him with some ill-starred 
explosion.^ 

"The age of fifteen or sixteen produced a revolution. 
At that momentous period of life retorts and crucibles 
were forever discarded, and an activity somewhat exces- 
sive took the place of voluntary confinement. A new 
passion seized him, which, but half gratified, still holds 
its force. He became enamoured of the woods, — a fancy 
which soon gained full control over the course of literary 
pursuits to which he was also addicted. After the usual 
boyish phases of ambitious self-ignorance, he resolved 
to confine his homage to the Muse of History, as being 
less apt than her wayward sisters to requite his devotion 
with a mortifying rebuff. At the age of eighteen the 
plan which he is still attempting to execute was, in its 
most essential features, formed. His idea was clear 
before him, yet attended with unpleasant doubts as to 
his ability to realize it to his own satisfaction. To solve 

1 In the second paper he gave some additional facts in regard to 
his childhood. He there writes : " At eight years I was sent to a 
farm belonging to my maternal grandfather, on the outskirts of 
the extensive tract of wild and rough woodland now called Middle- 
sex Fells. I walked twice a day to a school of high but undeserved 
reputation, about a mile distant, in the town of Medford. Here I 
learned very little, and spent the intervals of schooling more pro- 
fitably in collecting eggs, insects, and reptiles, trapping squirrels 
and woodchucks, and making persistent though rarely fortunate 
attempts to kill birds with arrows. After four years of this rus- 
tication I was brought back to Boston, when I was unhappily 
seized with a mania for experiments in chemistry, involving a 
lonely, confined, unwholesome sort of life, baneful to body and 
mind." 



820 A LIFE OF FRAXCIS PARKMAN 

these doubts he entered upon a training tolerably well 
fitted to serve his purpose, slighted all college studies 
which could not promote it, and pursued with avidity- 
such as had a bearing upon it, however indirect.^ 

" The task, as he then reckoned, would require about 
twenty years. The time allowed was ample ; but here he 
fell into a fatal error, entering on this long pilgrimage 
with all the vehemence of one starting on a mile heat. 
His reliance, however, was less on books than on such 
personal experience as should in some sense identify him 
with his theme. His natural inclinations urged him in 
the same direction, for his thoughts were always in the 
forests, whose features, not unmixed with softer images, 
possessed his waking and sleeping dreams, filling him 
with vague cravings impossible to satisfy. As fond of 
hardships as he was vain of enduring them, cherishing a 
sovereign scorn for every physical weakness or defect, 
deceived, moreover, by a rapid development of frame and 
sinews, which flattered him with the belief that discipline 
sufficiently unsparing would harden him into an athlete, 
he slighted the precautions of a more reasonable wood- 
craft, tired old foresters with long marches, stopped 
neither for heat nor rain, and slept on the earth without 

1 In the second paper he said : " Before the end of the sopho- 
more year my various schemes had crystallized into a plan of 
writing a story of what was then known as the ' Old French War,' 
— that is, the war that ended in the conquest of Canada, — for here, 
as it seemed to me, the forest drama was more stirring and the 
forest stage more thronged with appropriate actors than in any 
other passage of our history. It was not till some years later that 
I enlarged the plan to include the whole course of the American 
conflict between France and England, or, in other words, the 
history of the American forest ; for this was the light in which 
I regarded it. My theme fascinated me, and I was haunted with 
•wilderness images day and night." 



SPIKITUAL GROWTH 321 

a blanket.^ Another cause added not a little to the 
growing evil. It was impossible that conditions of the 
nervous system abnormal as his had been from infancy, 
should be without their effects on the mind, and some 
of these were of a nature highly to exasperate him. Un- 
conscious of their character and origin, and ignorant 
that with time and confirmed health they would have 
disappeared, he had no other thought than that of crush- 
ing them by force, and accordingly applied himself to 
the work. Hence resulted a state of mental tension, 
habitual for several years, and abundantly mischievous 
in its effects. With a mind overstrained and a body 
overtasked, he was burning his candle at both ends. 

'' But if a systematic and steady course of physical 
activity can show no better result, have not the advan- 
tages of such a course been overrated? In behalf of man- 
hood and common sense, he would protest against such a 
conclusion; and if any pale student, glued to his desk 
here, seek an apology for a way of life whose natural fruit 
is that pallid and emasculate scholarship of which New 
England has had too many examples, it will be far better 
that this sketch had not been written. For the student 

1 Eeferring to tliis period, he wrote in his second letter to Mr, 
Brimmer : " I spent all my summer vacation in the woods or in 
Canada, at the same time reading such books as I thought suited, 
in a general way, to help me towards my object. I pursued these 
lucubrations with a pernicious intensity, keeping my plans and 
purposes to myself while passing among my companions as an 
outspoken fellow." And of a little later period, when in the Law 
School, he writes : " Here, while following the prescribed courses 
at a quiet pace, I entered in earnest on two other courses, one of 
general history, the other of Indian history and ethnology, and at 
the same time studied diligently the models of English style, which 
various pursuits were far from excluding the pleasures of society." 

21 



322 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

there is, in its season, no better place than the saddle, 
and no better companion than the rifle or the oar. A 
highly irritable organism spurred the writer to excess in a 
course which, with one of different temperament, would 
have produced a free and hardy development of such 
faculties and forces as he possessed. Nor, even in the case 
in question, was the evil unmixed, since from the same 
source whence it issued came also the habit of mind and 
muscular vigor which saved him from a ruin absolute and 
irremediable. 

''In his own behalf, he is tempted to add to this digres- 
sion another. Though the seat of derangement may be 
the nervous system, it does not of necessity follow that the 
subject is that which, in the common sense of the word, is 
called 'nervous.' The writer was now and then felici- 
tated on 'having no nerves ' by those who thought them- 
selves maltreated by that mysterious portion of human 
organism. 

"This subterranean character of the mischief, early 
declaring itself at the surface, doubtless increased its 
intensity, while it saved it from being a nuisance to those 
around. 

^' Of the time when, leaving college, he entered nominally 
on the study of law, — though in fact with the determina- 
tion that neither this nor any other pursuit should stand 
in the path of his projects, — his recollection is of mingled 
pain and pleasure. His faculties were stimulated to their 
best efficiency. Never, before or since, has he known so 
great a facility of acquisition and comprehension. Soon, 
however, he became conscious that the impelling force was 
growing beyond his control. Labor became a passion, 
and rest intolerable, yet with a keen appetite for social 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 823 

enjoyment, in which he found not only a pleasure, but in 
some sense a repose. The stimulus rapidly increased. 
Despite of judgment and of will, his mind turned con- 
stantly towards remote objects of pursuit, and strained 
vehemently to attain them. The condition was that of a 
rider whose horse runs headlong, the bit between his teeth, 
or of a locomotive, built of indifferent material, under a 
head of steam too great for its strength, hissing at a score 
of crevices, yet rushing on with accelerating speed to the 
inevitable smash. 

"A specific sign of the mischief soon appeared in a weak- 
ness of sight, increasing with an ominous rapidity. 
Doubtless to study with the eyes of another is practicable, 
yet the expedient is not an eligible one, and the writer 
bethought him of an alternative. It was essential to his 
plans to give an inside view of Indian life. This then was 
the time at once to accomplish the object and rest his fail- 
ing vision. Accordingly he went to the Rocky MountainSj 
but he had reckoned without his host. A complication of 
severe disorders here seized him, and at one time narrowly 
missed bringing both him and his schemes to an abrupt 
termination, but, yielding to a system of starvation, at 
length assumed an intermittent and much less threatening 
form. A concurrence of circumstances left him but one 
means of accomplishing his purpose. This was to follow 
a large band of Ogillallah Indians, known to have crossed 
the Black Hill range a short time before. Reeling in the 
saddle with weakness and pain, he set forth, attended by 
a Canadian hunter. With much difficulty the trail was 
found, the Black Hills crossed, the reluctance of his fol- 
lower overcome, and the Indians discovered on the fifth 
day encamped near the Medicine Bow range of the Rocky 



324 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

Mountains. On a journey of a hundred miles, over a 
country in parts of the roughest, he had gained rather 
than lost strength, while his horse was knocked up and his 
companion disconsolate with a painful cough. Joining the 
Indians, he followed their wanderings for several weeks. 
To have worn the airs of an invalid would certainly have 
been an indiscretion, since in that case a horse, a rifle, a 
pair of pistols, and a red shirt might have offered tempta- 
tions too strong for aboriginal virtue. Yet to hunt 
buffalo on horseback, over a broken country, when, with- 
out the tonic of the chase, he could scarcely sit ujiright in 
the saddle, was not strictly necessary for maintaining the 
requisite prestige. The sport, however, was good, and the 
faith undoubting that, to tame the devil, it is best to take 
him by the horns. 

"As to the advantages of this method of dealing with 
that subtle personage, some question may have arisen in 
his mind, when, returning after a few months to the set- 
tlements, he found himself in a condition but ill adapted 
to support his theory. To the maladies of the prairie 
succeeded a suite of exhausting disorders, so reducing him 
that circulation at the extremities ceased, the light of the 
sun became insupportable, and a wild whirl possessed his 
brain, joined to a universal turmoil of the nervous system 
which put his philosophy to the sharpest test it had 
hitherto known. All collapsed, in short, but the tena- 
cious strength of muscles hardened by long activity. 
This condition was progressive, and did not reach its 
height — or, to speak more fitly, its depth — until some 
eighteen months after his return. The prospect before 
him was by no means attractive, contrasting somewhat 
pointedly with his boyish fancy of a life of action and a 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 325 

death in battle. Indeed, the change from intense activity 
to flat stagnation, attended with an utter demolition of 
air-castles, may claim a place, not of the meanest, in that 
legion of mental tortures which make the torments of the 
Inferno seem endurable. The desire was intense to return 
to the prairie and try a hair of the dog that bit him ; but 
this kill-or-cure expedient was debarred by the certainty 
that a few days' exposure to the open sunlight would 
have destroyed his sight. 

" In the spring of 1848, the condition indicated being 
then at its worst, the writer resolved to attempt the com- 
position of the 'History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac,' 
of which the material had been for some time collected and 
the ground prepared. The difficulty was so near to the 
impossible that the line of distinction often disappeared, 
while medical prescience condemned the plan as a short 
road to dire calamities. His motive, however, was in 
part a sanitary one, growing out of a conviction that 
nothing could be more deadly to his bodily and mental 
health than the entire absence of a purpose and an object. 
The difficulties were threefold: an extreme weakness of 
sight, disabling him even from writing his name except 
with eyes closed: a condition of the brain prohibiting 
fixed attention except at occasional and brief intervals; 
and an exhaustion and total derangement of the ner- 
vous system, producing of necessity a mood of mind 
most unfavorable to effort. To be made with impu- 
nity, the attempt must be made with the most watchful 
caution. 

" He caused a wooden frame to be constructed of the 
size and shape of a sheet of letter paper. Stout wires 
were fixed horizontally across it, half an inch apart, and 



326 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

a movable back of thick pasteboard fitted beliiud them. 
The paper for writing was placed between the pasteboard 
and the wires, guided by which, and using a black lead 
crayon, he could write not illegibly with closed eyes. 
He was at the time absent from home, on Staten Island, 
where, and in the neighboring city of iSTew York, he 
had friends who willingly offered their aid. It is need- 
less to say to which half of humanity nearly all these 
kind assistants belonged. He chose for a beginning that 
part of the work which offered fewest difficulties and with 
the subject of which he was most familiar, namely the 
Siege of Detroit. The books and documents, already 
partially arranged, were procured from Boston, and read 
to him at such times as he could listen to them, the 
length of each reading never, without injury, much ex- 
ceeding half an hour, and periods of several days fre- 
quently occurring during which he could not listen at 
all. Notes were made by him with closed eyes, and 
afterwards deciphered and read to him till he had 
mastered them. For the first half year, the rate of 
composition averaged about six lines a day. The por- 
tion of the book thus composed was afterwards partially 
rewritten. 

"His health improved under the process, and the re- 
mainder of the volume — in other words, nearly the 
whole of it" — was composed in Boston, while pacing in 
the twilight of a large garret, the only exercise which 
the sensitive condition of his sight permitted him in an 
unclouded day while the sun was above the horizon. It 
was afterwards written down from dictation by relatives 
under the same roof, to whom he was also indebted for 
the preparatory readings. His progress was much less 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 327 

tedious tLan at the outset, and the history was complete 
in about two years and a half. 

''He then entered upon the subject of Trance in the 
New World,' — a work, or series of works, involving 
minute and extended investigation. The difficulties 
which met him at the outset were incalculable. Wholly 
unable to use his eyes, he had before him the task, irk- 
some at best where there is no natural inclination for 
it, of tracing out, collecting, indexing, arranging, and 
digesting a great mass of incongruous material scattered 
on both sides of the Atlantic. Those pursuing historical 
studies under the disadvantages of impaired sight have 
not hitherto attempted in person this kind of work dur- 
ing the period of their disability, but have deputed it 
to skilled and trusty assistants, — a most wise cou.rse in 
cases where it is practicable. The writer, however, partly 
from the nature of his subject and his plan, though in 
special instances receiving very valuable aid, was forced 
in the main to rely on his own research. The language 
was chiefly French, and the reader was a girl from the 
public schools, ignorant of any tongue but her own. The 
effect, though highly amusing to bystanders, was far 
from being so to the person endeavoring to follow the 
meaning of this singular jargon. Catalogues, indexes, 
tables of contents in abundance were, however, read, 
and correspondence opened with those who could lend 
aid or information. Good progress had been made in 
the preliminary surveys, and many books examined and 
digested on a systematic plan for future reference, when 
a disaster befell the writer which set his calculations at 
naught. 

" This was an effusion of water on the left knee, in the 



328 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

autumn of 1851. A partial recovery was followed by a 
relapse, involving a close confinement of two years and 
a weakened and sensitive condition of the joint from 
which it has never recovered. The effects of the confine- 
ment were as curious as unenviable. All the irritability 
of the system centred in the head. The most definite 
of the effects produced was one closely resembling the 
tension of an iron band, secured round the head and con- 
tracting with an extreme force, with the attempt to con- 
centrate the thoughts, listen to reading, or at times to 
engage in conversation. This was, however, endurable 
in comparison with other forms of attack which cannot 
be intelligibly described from the want of analogous 
sensations by which to convey the requisite impressions. 
The brain was stimulated to a restless activity, impelling 
through it a headlong current of thought which, however, 
must be arrested and the irritated organ held in quies- 
cence on a penalty to avert which no degree of exertion 
was too costly. The whirl, the confusion, and strange 
undefined torture attending this condition are only to be 
conceived by one who has felt them. Possibly they may 
have analogies in the savage punishment once in use 
in some of our prisons, where drops of water were made 
to fall from a height on the shaved head of the offender, 
soon producing an effect which brought to reason the 
most contumacious. Sleep, of course, was banished dur- 
ing the periods of attack, and in its place was demanded, 
for the exclusion of thouglit, an effort more severe than 
the writer has ever put forth in any other cause. In a 
few hours, however, a condition of exhaustion would 
ensue; and, both patient and disease being spent, the 
latter fell into a dull lethargic stage far more support- 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 329 

able. Excitement or alarm would probably bare proved 
wholly ruinous. 

'^ These were the extreme conditions of the disorder 
which has reached two crises, — one at the end of 1853, 
the other in 1858. In the latter case it was about four 
years before the power of mental application was in the 
smallest degree restored, nor, since the first year of the 
confinement has there been any waking hour when he has 
not been in some degree conscious of the presence of the 
malady. Influences tending to depress the mind have at 
all times proved far less injurious than those tending to 
excite, or even pleasurably exhilarate, and a lively con- 
versation has often been a cause of serious mischief. A 
cautious vigilance has been necessary from the first, and 
this cerebral devil has perhaps had his uses as a teacher 
of philosophy. 

''Meanwhile the Faculty of Medicine were not idle, dis- 
playing that exuberance of resource for which that remark- 
able profession is justly famed. The wisest, indeed, did 
nothing, commending his patient to time and faith ; but 
the activity of his brethren made full amends for this 
masterly inaction. One was for tonics, another for a diet 
of milk, one counselled galvanism, another hydropathy ; 
one scarred him behind the neck with nitric acid, another 
drew red-hot irons along his spine with a view of enliven- 
ing that organ. Opinion was divergent as practice. One 
assured him of recovery in six years; another thought 
that he would never recover. Another, with grave cir- 
cumlocution, lest the patient should take fright, informed 
him that he was the victim of an organic disease of the 
brain, which must needs despatch him to another world 
within a twelvemonth; and he stood amazed at the smile 



330 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PAROIAN 

of an auditor who neither cared for the announcement nor 
believed it. Another, an eminent physiologist of Paris, 
after an acquaintance of three months, one day told him 
that, from the nature of the disorder, he had at first sup- 
posed that it must in accordance with precedent he at- 
tended with insanity, and had ever since been studying 
him to discover under what form the supposed aberration 
declared itself, adding, with a somewhat humorous look, 
that his researches had not been rewarded with the small- 
est success. 

'' In the severer periods of the disorder, books were dis- 
carded for horticulture, which benign pursuit has proved 
most salutary in its influences. One year, four years, 
and numerous short intervals, lasting from a day to a 
month, represent these literary interruptions since the 
work in hand was begun. Under the most favorable con- 
ditions, it was a slow and doubtful navigation, beset with 
reefs and breakers, demanding a constant look-out and a 
constant throwing of the lead. Of late years, however, 
the condition of the sight has so far improved as to per- 
mit reading, not exceeding, on the average, five minutes 
at one time. This modicum of power, though apparently 
trifling, proved of the greatest service, since, by a cau- 
tious management, its application may be extended. By 
reading for one minute, and then resting for an equal 
time, this alternate process may generally be continued 
for about half an hour. Then, after a sufficient interval, 
it may be repeated, often three or four times in the course 
of the day. By this means nearly the whole of the vol- 
ume now offered has been composed. "When the con- 
ditions were such as to render systematic application 
possible, a reader has been employed, usually a pupil of 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 331 

the public schools. On one occasion, however, the ser- 
vices of a young man, highly intelligent, and an excellent 
linguist, were obtained for a short time. With such as- 
sistance every difficulty vanished, but it could not long 
be continued. 

*' At present the work, or rather the series of separate 
works, stands as follows : Most of the material is collected 
or within reach. Another volume, on the Jesuits in North 
America, is one-third written. Another, on the French 
Explorers of the Great West, is half written ; while a 
third, devoted to the checkered career of Louis de Buade, 
Comte de Frontenac, is partially arranged for composition. 
Each work is designed to be a unit in itself, independently 
of the rest ; but the whole, taken as a series, will form a 
connected history of France in the New World.^ 

*' How far, by a process combining the slowness of the 
tortoise with the uncertainty of the hare, an undertaking 
of close and extended research can be advanced, is a ques- 
tion to solve which there is no aid from precedent, since 
it does not appear that an attempt under similar circum- 
stances has hitherto been made. The writer looks, how- 
ever, for a fair degree of success.^ 

1 In the second letter he said : " While engaged on these books, 
I made many journeys in the United States and Canada in search of 
material, and went four times to Europe with a similar object. The 
task of exploring archives and collecting documents, to me repul- 
sive at the best, was under the circumstances difficult, and would 
have been impossible but for the aid of competent assistants work- 
ing under my direction." 

■^ In writing his second letter he said : " Taking the last forty 
years as a whole, the capacity of literary work, which during that 
time has fallen to my share has, I am confident, been considerably 
less than a fourth part of what it woxild have been under normal 
conditions." 



332 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

''Irksome as may be the requirements of conditions so 
anomalous, tliey are far less oppressive than the necessity 
they involve of being busied with the past when the pres- 
ent has claims so urgent, and holding the pen with a hand 
that should have grasped the sword." 



CHAPTER XIII 

Parkman's spiritual growth is naturally the most 
interesting element of his biography, but it is also 
the most obscure. In attempting to follow it we 
can see some of his dangers, arising from the defects 
of his qualities and the demands of his labor and 
experience; but we cannot so easily follow the 
aspirations of his reserved nature, or the efforts and 
influences by which he brought his character to its 
mellow maturity. 

His promontory of a chin and his expression of 
firmness might well cause some apprehensions as to 
spiritual qualities. He appears to have recognized a 
danger in his own strength and firmness, as tending 
to a certain degree of hardness. It is easy to believe 
that this masterful spirit in early and middle life was 
not free from egotism, — a defect which met with 
little, if any, opposition from the devoted women 
about him. For his very egotism was always consid- 
erate, and, in spite of invalidism, free from the pursuit 
of personal comforts; singularly enough, it was a 
means of attaining the aims of the self-sacrificing 
scholar. 

One of the strongest opponents of his growth was 
an innate conservatism. In many ways, despite his 



334 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

volcanic warmth and energy, he was unchangeable as 
the hills. Independence and reserve often joined 
hands in him. He said of Montcalm : " A courage so 
nobly sustained lifts him above pity ; " and he himself 
asked no pity. His engagement and marriage sur- 
prised many of his friends — as an admission of sen- 
timent as a rival to ambition. He never gave himself 
out, intimately, to any one, though receiving confi- 
dences with genuine interest. Thus human sympathy 
does not seem, at a casual glance, to have been an 
important source of his spiritual riches. A charac- 
teristic incident may be given as an evidence of his 
extreme reserve in regard to private matters. When 
he and his devoted sister Eliza discussed the dedica- 
tion of one of his volumes to her, they both concluded 
that they did not wish to make such a revelation of 
their affection to the public. As far as we can judge, 
his worth and charm attracted more affection than he 
expressed in return, — so self-sustaining a nature 
could not feel the dependent kind of affection. He 
never regarded death or any other event as a dispen- 
sation of Providence, or attached to it any degree of 
mysticism or fatality. When his son died, and some 
one said: "He was too good to live," Parkman cor- 
rected at once any such misinterpretation of life, by 
saying that such an idea is true of no one ; that the 
world needs the best, and the best can always find a 
place in it. Again, at the death of his wife when a 
sympathetic friend assumed that life had no longer 
any interest for him, he promptly dispelled any such 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 335 

gloomy conception. His patience never included 
either personal discouragement, fretful rebellion, or 
passive surrender to the guidance of supernatural 
powers. He said : " A man must feel that he holds 
his fate in his own hands." And since we have to 
take men and things as they are, it would be difficult 
to find a philosophy better fitted to the man, or a man 
better fitted to his experience. He often had to face 
prospects that would have daunted many a man of 
less firmness and more sentiment. In 1859, for ex- 
ample, he was in one of the " dismallest dens on earth." 
The previous autumn he had gone to Paris for relief 
to his spirits after the death of his wife, and for med- 
ical help against his maladies, which were then very 
threatening. He returned in no better health, to 
what would have been a cheerless hearth but for the 
devotion of his mother and sisters. The bright 
visions, the adventures, the sunshine and freedom 
that had appeared inseparable from the energetic 
youth, were now replaced by very different elements 
of life. Shut up in his darkened study, threatened 
with total blindness, he led at this time a life of 
monastic solitude ; in place of enjoying buoyant activ- 
ity he sat down to the endurance of pain ; his ambition 
was met either by absolute inability to work, or by 
exasperating interruptions and petty achievements; 
worst of all, he was in danger of insanity. The 
enemy lay ambushed in the darkest possibilities ; and 
how pitilessly must these have pressed upon him in 
the weakest moments ! Yet undoubtedly he stated his 



336 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

own philosophy in giving Vassall Morton's ; " Blows 
are good for most men, and suffering, to the farthest 
limit of their endurance what they most need. " ^ True, 
there were times when his " faith was wrenched to its 
uttermost roots. He thought the world was given 
over to the devil. "^ 

All this is too much to contemplate ; but it was not 
too much for Parkman to endure. There is little won- 
der that he set down his feeling in the following de- 
scription of the rock off Schooner Head, Mount Desert, 
when on a visit to his classmate, Mr. George S. Hale, 
in 1871 : " Under a leaden sky the island rocks rest 
sombre and cold upon the leaden water, as strong men, 
under the clouds of a dreary destiny, bide their hour 
in still and stern endurance." The inherent nobility 
of his nature, however, and his ideals, were too lofty 
to allow such a spirit permanent control of his life. In 
"Vassall Morton," he made Edith say of the hero:^ 

''It was a bitter schooling, a long siege, and a dreary 
one; but you have triumphed, and you wear its trophy, — 
the heroic calm, the mind tranquil with consciousness of 
power. You have wrung a proud tribute out of sorrow; 
but has it yielded you all its treasure? Could you but 
have learned that gentler, deeper, higher philosophy 
which builds for itself a temple out of ruin, and makes 
weakness invincible with binding its tendrils to the 
rock." 

Yet, with his New England conscience and training, 
he may have overestimated his defects, and charged 
a tendency with being an actual condition. 

1 P. 405. 2 p. 414. 3 p. 383. 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 337 

The details of Parkman's home life were known to 
me during only his last years, but for the sake of com- 
pleteness I must give what I can of the preceding 
epochs in their bearing on his spiritual growth, flis 
married life of eight years, though marked by many 
severe trials, was happy with mutual affection and de- 
votion. Mrs. Parkman was a woman of excellent under- 
standing, a cheerful disposition, more practical than 
intellectual, bright in conversation, with a sense of 
humor to match his own, and a large fund of affec- 
tion. The twelve years after her death were the most 
trying period of Parkman's life. It was then that he 
suffered most from pain and anxiety, from his exag- 
gerated reserve, and from the effects of self-centred 
efforts to drive on his work. As his need of quiet 
kept him generally in his study, his isolation was due 
chiefly to nervous and physical conditions. His 
domestic relations were never marked by any cold- 
ness or constraint; on the contrary, he was always 
cordial, kindly, and considerate. But some of their 
friends, who considered the inner life, felt that 
although he lived happily with his family he was not 
of them in the most intimate sense; and that for a 
time he did not appreciate fully and responsively their 
sympathy and devotion. 

His mother died in 1871 ; Parkman wrote of 
the event in these terms : " Last week my mother's 
long and painful illness was calmly and peacefully 
ended, and a life of rare affection, disinterestedness, 
and self-devotion came to its close on earth." When 

22 



338 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAX 

on the death of their mother his sister Eliza was able 
to devote herself thenceforth wholly to him, her inti- 
mate friends were concerned for her happiness because 
of his absorption in his work. 

A word may be said here about his relations to his 
women friends. There are few, if any, literary men 
who were so dependent on women, or who received 
so much affectionate service at their hands. Only 
Wordsworth approached him in this respect. With 
all his self-sustaining power, Parkman was very sen- 
sitive to their influence. It could hardly be other- 
wise with a man possessing so much imagination, 
sensibility, and virility. Although he cherished his 
men friends and talked with them freely on some 
topics, he never could give himself to any of them 
so well as he could to a congenial woman. He made 
Vassall Morton say of himself (p. 358): "Find me a 
woman of sense, with a brain to discern, a heart to 
feel, passion to feel vehemently, and principles to feel 
rightly, and I will show her my mind; or, if not, I 
will show it to no one." 

Besides these qualities he desired a woman to be 
strong and healthy, bright in conversation, and full 
of feminine and maternal instincts. He did not 
care for intellectual tendencies ; he even detested the 
complexities of the "cultured and refined" type. 
What he desired of women was not inspiration in 
regard to serious interests, but recreation and amuse- 
ment. His keenest social pleasures came from his 
friendships with women ; and one of his hardest trials 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 339 

was the limitation of such intercourse by reason of 
his maladies. He in turn attracted women by many 
qualities, — his gallant and chivalrous temper, his 
frankness and love of fun, and his loyalty. As a 
friend he listened with sympathy and quick percep- 
tions, ever exercising a steadying influence by his 
wise and practical counsel. One of the marked feat- 
ures of his later life was its richness in the affec- 
tionate friendship of fine women. He reaped this 
reward in some cases even from strangers who knew 
him only through his histories. 

Parkman was remarkably fortunate in the assistance 
of the women in his own domestic circle. His life 
was by no means wholly in shadow, for during the 
fifty years of his work he was never without all the 
help that affection could give. Some one of the 
family circle was always at hand to read or write for 
him, and he was relieved to a remarkable degree from 
ordinary family cares. Those who thus helped him 
needed and possessed exceptional tact, intelligence, 
and devotion to meet the circumstances. For his 
needs were so imperative and his condition was so 
fluctuating that only members of his household, close 
at hand and close at heart, could give him the neces- 
sary help. And while he inspired an affection that 
made such devotion no sacrifice, he was ever gener- 
ous in acknowledging his indebtedness to them. The 
helpful friendship that Miss Parkman bestowed on 
her brother is not often to be matched in literary his- 
tory ; and his success was due in a large measure to 



340 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

her services and sympathy. At the time of their 
junction in domestic life, her friends felt that she 
was somewhat alone in her patient devotion. But in 
spite of some elements of his puritan nature, they 
were closely united by many traits of character, — 
by their conservative opinions, common literary in- 
terests, and a love of simplicity, decorum, and cheer- 
fulness; as the years passed, Parkman's growth in 
sympathy brought them nearer to each other; and 
finally their happiness together was a joint reward 
for two lives of exceptional experiences. 

His brother Eliot, during his infrequent sojourns 
at home, made the domestic atmosphere sunny with 
abundant humor and vivacity. In a letter, Jan. 11, 
1872, Parkraan thus refers to his life and character: 

''A telegram from Commodore Stembel, U. S. N., says 
that my only brother, a lieutenant in the navy, had died 
suddenly at San Francisco from the effects of a fall. His 
body arrived last evening. After passing a thousand 
risks in travel and in war, he died at last by what seemed 
a trivial accident, but which involved the rupture of an 
internal artery. He was of a most affectionate and gen- 
erous nature, and the strongest family attachments." 

Parkman was a little above medium height, of an 
erect, well-built frame, with square shoulders and 
good muscular development, but spare and sinewy in 
habit. Only in his last year or two did he allow 
himself to grow stout, following his physician's rec- 
ommendation in the hope of thus becoming less ner- 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 341 

vous and sleepless. Ou horseback, especially, he was 
a dashing and martial figure. He had dark hair, and 
a wholesome color quite foreign to the traditional 
pallor of the student. His head and features were 
somewhat angular, with a chin of most exceptional 
prominence and strength. His gray, penetrating 
eyes were, in youth, of good size, but in later years 
they seemed smaller because of chronic inflammation 
of the lids. He had firm, good-sized hands with 
square finger-tips. His thin face, always smooth- 
shaven, generally wore a grave, thoughtful expression, 
but frank and friendly: strength and alertness com- 
bined with kindliness to give it distinction. His 
mouth, though expressive chiefly of inflexible firm- 
ness, was very mobile. His smile was often re- 
marked for its expressiveness ; it reminded me always 
of these traits of Morton : " the heroic calm, the mind 
tranquil with consciousness of power." ^ Parkman's 
smile expressed a full consciousness of his strength 
and victory in life; and it often had a very clear 
address to you by the penetrating look he sent for 
a moment into your eyes. Or, at other times, it 
showed an instant of absence — a turn through far 
realms of thought; it captured your fancy with a 
vision of genial companionship on some unknown 
quest. His laughter was hardly audible, though it 
was hearty ; showing itself chiefly by shaking sides 
and subdued or repressed sounds. His speaking 
voice was low and his pronunciation clear. 
1 P. 38a 



342 A LIFE or FRANCIS PARKMAN 

His appearance was full of distinction ; but it shone 
through a very quiet, unobtrusive manner. There 
was in him much of the colonial gentleman, but 
softened and unbent. Eccentricity he hated, and he 
enjoyed the conventional proprieties of society in his 
native city. Though not fastidious, he was always 
neatly dressed, in good London-made clothes, which 
he wore out thoroughly. In coming to greet you he 
advanced with an erect bearing and quick, firm step, 
took your hand firmly and gave it a good but not 
demonstrative shake ; meanwhile looking you in the 
eye for a moment with a penetrating, frank, and cor- 
dial expression. Even when he came on his crutches 
he brought a manly, cheering presence. There was 
absolutely nothing of the morbid invalid about himj 
nor any hint of the assumptions of learning and fame. 
In full maturity his modesty, simplicity, frankness, 
gentleness, and patience were given an additional 
charm by the sympathy with which he met his friends. 
His modesty was not the modesty of naivete or 
humility. On the contrary, he was always, in a quiet 
way, a masterful rather than a humble spirit. He 
held his virtues by a firmer grasp than unconscious 
possession. With an unusual knowledge of himself, 
he placed the highest value on his qualities as means 
for achievement and the growth of character. 

Parkman's homes were perfectly suited to his tastes 
and needs. In winter he preferred to live in Boston, 
with his sister, at 50 Chestnut Street; in spite of 
his love of nature, he never passed a winter in the 



SPIRITUAL GEOWTH 343 

country. This street, in the centre of Boston and 
very near the Common, is yet a quiet, secluded quar- 
ter, attractive with trees and old-fashioned houses. 
The Parkman home is a twilight house of subdued 
colors, simply furnished with heirlooms, and full of 
the peace and comfort derived from good housekeep- 
ing and a quiet spirit. During the last years of his 
life, when his lameness was very troublesome, he 
mounted to his study on the third floor by an elevator 
which he could operate by the power of his own arms. 
The room had a subdued light from two windows 
facing the north. An open stove with a soft-coal fire 
cast a glow into the shadows ; two of the walls were 
covered with bookshelves, the others with engraved 
portraits of historic persons. On the mantel stood 
some of Barye's statuettes of animals, and on the wall 
were a few Indian relics he had brought from the 
Oregon Trail. The simplicity of his tastes and the 
practicality of his mind were shown in this study: it 
was simply a writer's workshop, without any luxu- 
rious or ornamental appointment. He did not approve 
of large collections of books in private houses, because 
of the trouble they give, and because such sources of 
information should be accessible to students, in public 
libraries. His collection consisted of about twenty- 
five hundred volumes, which he bequeathed to Har- 
vard College ; some of these were inherited from his 
father. The chief feature of his library was his col- 
lection of manuscripts, which far outweighed in value 
all the other works. Next in importance was a col- 



344 A LIFE OF FKANCIS PAROIAN 

lection of eighty-nine maps, and about fifteen hundred 
works relating chiefly to his historic labors. All these 
are now kept together in Harvard College library as 
the "Parkman Collection." There are almost no 
notes on the margins ; in a very few books he made 
now and then a mark or sign that was a sufficient aid 
to his exceptional memory. His contempt for 
"pallid and emasculate scholarship" is the key to his 
feeling for books and bookworms. A man of nature 
and of life rather than a man of books, he had no 
interest in fine bindings, costly editions, or rare 
works aside from their contents. 

We have seen that during his early and middle life 
he met his trials with "stem and silent endurance." 
From the earliest of his married life onward till near 
the close, the condition of his brain seemed to make it 
necessary for him to be silent and alone most of the 
time. But as years rolled on, the improvement in his 
health, the easier progress of his labor, and the devel- 
opment of his sympathy enabled him at last to meet 
life with happier moods and habits. Fortunately he 
was not a man of moods, but one who had in him a 
wellspring of cheerfulness that rarely ceased to flow. 
This virtue had exceptional value in his case, because 
of his inherited affection of the brain; and he was 
fortunate in early coming to the belief that insanity 
often begins in moods and mental conditions that at 
the beginning can be avoided. 

Parkman nourished his cheerfulness in the most 
practical way. His native energy here served him 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 345 

efficiently, aiding him in bringing forward a keen 
sense of humor which one would hardly expect in 
looking at his grave, strong face. He and his chief 
ally, his sister, thus armed themselves with rays of 
sunshine. The problem they had to meet was to 
relieve his brain by some lightsome activity, avoiding 
both serious topics of conversation and gloomy 
silence. In such efforts he acquired the happy 
faculty of making much of little things, and casting 
into the commonplace events and talks of the day a 
pervading spirit of jocoseness which at last became 
more or less habitual in the domestic circle. His 
sense of humor had its freest play in simple, objec- 
tive, childlike things ; it rarely reached the fine point 
of wit, or entered into the delicate play of psycho- 
logic elements. For example, he was presented by 
one of his granddaughters, on Christmas, with a 
badge in the form of a cat, cut out of a piece of- 
yellow flannel. For many years when he visited the 
family he invariably produced this cat with certain 
miaulings, and stories of her wanderings during the 
preceding year. He had also, for similar amuse- 
ment, an Uncle John Frog and a turtle. He liked 
to hear his brother-in-law, Rev. Dr. Cordner, an 
Irish gentleman, read Irish ballads; and when his 
nieces entered the room he often thrummed Rory 
O'More as a silent greeting and banter. 

As still further aid he called into service two facul- 
ties that were already highly developed by his literary 
labors — imagination, and skill in narration. One of 



346 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PAROIAN 

the chief elements of his domestic intercourse came 
to be humorous romancing. At breakfast, after 
replying briefly to inquiries as to his health, he would 
begin a tale and carry it on throughout the meal, and 
even continue it from day to day. He whiled away 
the time in the same way when driving about the 
country. The chief characteristic of these stories 
was a jocose exaggeration. Any subject would 
serve ; now he would reconstruct a character of some 
novel ; or would take a name on a sign as the starting 
point, and carry the imaginary owner through various 
experiences more or less impossible. He married off 
his daughters to persons they detested, and then 
teased them with making such unwise selections. 
Frequently he chose subjects more or less theologi- 
cal ; he invented a minister in Florida who was so ill 
supported by his congregation that he had to eat 
crocodile eggs, which turned him into an amphibi- 
ous divine; and a Miss Simpkins, who conducted 
a Sunday School for young demons; as her pupils 
were rather restless, she passed their tails through 
holes in the bench, and tied knots underneath. Or 
he would now and then take up one of the Prophets, 
and give him a character and history hardly in accord 
with Biblical traditions. Another string to his bow 
was humorous verse. During sleepless hours he often 
composed parodies; one was on the "Psalm of Life " 
— cats being the heroes. At breakfast he would 
often make additions to these compositions, and thus 
enrich and expand a topic to its utmost. Another 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 347 

frequent amusement was the recitation of poetry ; he 
often gave extracts from "Bombastes Furioso" or 
Byron's "Vision of Judgment." "The Baby's D^- 
but," from Horace Smith's "Rejected Addresses," 
was a favorite with him, because it parodied Words- 
worth, whom he disliked as poet and man. His 
memory was stored with an inexhaustible supply of 
this whimsical kind of wit; but when insomnia made 
him too ill for it, he would play with the cat or 
the children and keep silent. In many instances 
these diversions were simply a mask for hiding his 
sufferings. 

Naturally he got all that he could from books. 
Mr. Frothingham gives the following account of his 
reading : 

''In his early life he read a great deal of the best Eng- 
lish prose and verse; I recollect years ago, it must have 
been when he was in college, at his father's house on 
Bowdoin Square, a question arose in regard to Dr. John- 
son, and Francis expressed an idea of the Doctor's char- 
acter which showed him to be familiar with his writings. 
This love of the best English literature he kept alive 
through college and all his life. He had a great enthusi- 
asm as a youth for Milton ; Shakespere he always had 
by him. In mottoes prefixed to his 'Vassall Morton,' 
I find the names of thirty poets. It would not be safe, 
of course, to presume that he had read all these, but it 
is safe to say that Shakespere, Pope, Scott, Byron, the 
'Percy Reliques,' Sir David Lindsay, Campbell, Moliere, 
were familiar to him. His taste was for heroic and not 
for sentimental writing. I should say that he might 



348 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

prefer the book of ' Proverbs ' to the book of ' Psalms ' ; 
the Gospel of Matthew to the Gospel of John; Scott to 
Shelley; for he had no relish for metaphysics or abstrac- 
tions of any kind, scientific or other. His dislike of 
everything morbid — melancholy, misanthropy, depres- 
sion — amounted to abhorrence, and if he could not be 
cheerful he went away if he was able; and if not, he 
held his tongue or turned to merry thoughts." 

This account is true as far as it goes ; but it does 
not go beyond his early manhood. He had taste and 
capacity for a varied culture within certain lines; 
but during all the latter half of his life it was neces- 
sary for him to avoid serious topics and to seek in 
reading chiefly amusement. He listened with most 
pleasure to those works of fiction that are objective 
in content and treatment, and full of stirring inci- 
dents. Jane Austen, Stevenson, Haggard, Dumas, 
were among his favorites, and he enjoyed every repe- 
tition of " Pickwick " as if it had been new to him. 
The "Nation" was read to him every week, also any 
article of unusual interest in the periodicals. He 
would tolerate nothing dreamy, sentimental, untruth- 
ful, metaphysical, or philanthropic. He disliked 
Victor Hugo for exaggeration, as, for example, in 
making the dwarf on the tower of Notre Dame per- 
form the impossible feat of casting off the ladder 
after it had been loaded with the assaulting party. 
He also put Longfellow aside for romancing so much 
in "Evangeline." And although enjoying Du Man- 
ner's "Peter Ibbetson" up to the mystical part, he 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 349 

refused to hear tlie rest of the book. Of Lowell 
he wrote : " I am glad you like ' The Cathedral. ' 
Lowell is equally estimable as a man and as a poet."^ 
His growth was helped again by his labors. He 
came to see that success could not be won by taking 
the devil by the horns; that, on the contrary, he 
must cultivate patience and sweetness as remedies for 
irritation and nervous excitement. His theme, deal- 
ing as it did with character in detail, kept him alive 
to his own course of development. Ideality was 
stimulated in him by a disinterested pursuit of schol- 
arship. In following his literary path he was thus led 
to drop some of his native hindrances, and mount to 
regions of more light. Again, his life-long study of 
men and women inevitably brought him more and 
more in contact with spiritual elements of character 
and developed his sympathy. An evidence of this 
was the fact that he expressed in playful ways more 
affection for his grandchildren than he had shown 
towards his own children. He was fond of boys ; he 
liked to chaff them for the sake of getting glimpses 
of their nature. He often saw at a glance the effec- 
tive forces in a child's personality, and narrated or 
even imitated its conduct as evidence. His interest 
in little folks was pleasantly shown at the gathering 
of his children and grandchildren at Christmas, when 
he watched from his chair, with lively interest, the 
changing groups about the tree, and often opened a 
vein of character by some question or bit of bantering. 

1 To Dr. George Stewart, Feb. 21, 1870. 



350 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

A more usual and characteristic scene might be 
enjoyed by any friend who should have called of an 
evening at the old house in Chestnut Street. The 
soft colors of the sitting-room were still further sub- 
dued by a mild light and a low shade covering the 
lamp. While the ladies were by the table sewing 
or reading, Parkman sat at a distance from the light, 
at the side of the fireplace, in a chair that was erect 
and firm in form and substance. In the shadows of 
his corner he was hardly visible. He often rested his 
elbows on the chair-arms, and meditatively adjusted 
the finger nails of one hand to those of the other, from 
time to time separating his hands to see if he could 
bring them together accurately again with a sharp 
little blow. Meanwhile the reading or talking of the 
others went on. He occasionally looked up at a 
speaker with a direct and decided way to ask a 
question or pass a remark ; but generally he saved his 
eyes by keeping them lowered on his finger-tips or on 
the floor. Though he was never a dreamer, absent- 
ing himself in mind from his companions, he often 
passed the evening without joining much in the con- 
versation. At other times he would be full of quiet 
talk. 

His summer home was on the southwestern shore 
of Jamaica Pond, a small body of water now incor- 
porated in the parks of Boston. The pond is pleas- 
antly surrounded by the groves and grounds of 
suburban residences. His choice of this location 
proved to be a very happy one, in giving not only a 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 351 

beautiful site near the city, but especially in affording 
him facilities for rowing — • the only exercise he could 
take in periods of lameness in the knee. The grounds 
sloped gently down to the water, and were very in- 
viting with the shade of many fine trees and the pro- 
ductions of his skill in horticulture. The house was 
an unpretending wooden structure, furnished simply 
and comfortably, and kept open to the air and sun- 
light. Social and domestic life in this place was not 
different from that of the winter home ; but Parkman 
had here one more means of keeping up cheerfulness : 
the daily row of one hour, which he never omitted 
or shortened. Such frequent turns on a lake only a 
quarter of a mile across would have become insuffer- 
ably tedious without some means of mental entertain- 
ment. He therefore enlarged the Pond, by the use 
of far-off names such as the Cape of Good Hope and 
Bering's Sea; peopling each region with the lions 
or the whales appropriate to the surroundings. He 
kept in its depths a terrible ichthyosaurus and a 
fearful sea-serpent. To the very cats along the 
shore — seen or unseen — he gave names, characters, 
and the most astonishing experiences. The family 
of muskrats on the bit of an island were visited daily 
to watch their building and domestic doings. One 
day he found that a muskrat had brought a leaf of 
grass and put it on top of a rock sticking above the 
water, whereupon he named the rock "the shrine." 
When his sister was with him he would let the boat 
stop beside it for a minute or two, then ask, with a 



352 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

reverential and serious air, " Are you ready to leave ? " 
and move off in silence. 

In these later years he spent a part of each summer 
with his son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. 
Coolidge, in the Wentworth Mansion, near Ports- 
mouth, New Hampshire. The old farm is approached 
by a lane winding through pine woods; the stone 
walls are half hidden by cedars, barberries, and 
vines ; and the outcropping ledges of rock are touched 
off with juniper and flaming sumac. You come out 
of the woods at last into a field on the end of a point 
in the bay, and look off over the channels winding 
among islands, points, and marshes. On the left in 
the distance may be seen the spires and masts of 
Portsmouth, and in front a piece of the ocean with 
the Isles of Shoals ; you hear the surf and the tolling 
of the bell-buoy on the harbor bar. Passing a few 
old apple-trees remaining as memorials of old-time 
cheer, you come face to face with the Mansion. It 
is a rambling farmhouse of many angles and gables, 
quaint little rooms, mysterious nooks and queer pas- 
sages, and one large room where the governor's 
council used to meet. The unkempt naturalness of 
the grounds and shore, the colonial plainness of the 
house within, the spirit of simplicity that pervades 
it all, and the historic associations, made it a pleasant 
and appropriate place for Parkman's summer days at 
the close of his life.^ 

1 He described the region in chapter xviii. of the second volume 
of A Half Century. Mr. Barrett "Wendell also gives an attractive 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 353 

His strong social instincts were another important 
help in his growth. It is well to emphasize this side 
of his character in order to balance the effect of the 
sterner elements in his personality. He lacked the 
overflowing geniality and magnetism needed to set 
the social currents flowing in a large company or 
club, as well as the special talents required in a 
successful diner-out. In meeting strangers at a 
dinner he would at first keep silent, while taking the 
gauge of those present ; and he seldom led in conver- 
sation unless drawn out. Notwithstanding this, he 
was essentially a man of society, liking both the free- 
dom of intimate friendship and the decorum of cere- 
monious intercourse. Also, having seen much of the 
world, he was at ease with all sorts of men and in all 
social doings. People felt him to be a "good fellow." 
The larger demands made on his social abilities by 
the presidency of the St. Botolph Club were beneficial 
to him ; in his reserved way he was approachable to 
everybody. He had an especial fondness for the 
Saturday Club, where he met a few intimate friends 
in the freest and most informal intercourse. He 
was a member also of the Union Club. He often 
made a painful effort to attend the meetings of these 
clubs, and sometimes went — when unable to climb 
the stairs — just to greet his friends in the hall. On 
his drives about the country he would frequently call 

glimpse of TVentworth Mansion and of Mr. Parkman in his paper 
Francis Parkman, in the Proceedings of the American Academy of 
Arts and Sciences, vol. xxix. 

23 



354 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PAROIAN 

on his friends, even if unable to leave his carriage, 
and enjoy a few minutes of their presence at the 
door. The range of Parkman's topics of conversa- 
tion was rather limited, considering his intellectual 
abilities and his fame. His talk was almost always 
objective; his greatest pleasure seemed to be the 
recounting the experiences of his youth. With an 
excellent memory he recalled these scenes in detail ; 
and often embellished them with imaginary incidents, 
rehearsing them with all the vividness of recent 
events. He also talked frequently of nature, telling 
anecdotes of cats and other animals. More rarely he 
condemned in his conclusive manner the political 
and socialistic tendencies of his times, — irritating 
topics which he generally avoided. Now and then 
he enjoyed shocking a prig, or taking down the 
dignity of self-assured superiority. He used to tell 
of a visit he made to a court-room, where one of his 
friends sat on the bench, arrayed in his robes and 
stiffened with official grandeur. Parkman winked at 
him on entering, and enjoyed immensely the pompous 
immobility of his old friend in failing to respond. 
He knew and remembered everything which affected 
or interested those with whom he was intimate; 
knew their children and grandchildren by name 
and by character, and never forgot to inquire after 
them. 

Parkman was more cheerful than humorous, and 
more humorous than witty. Possessing a quick per- 
ception of humor, he was yet not a father of epigrams 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 355 

and witticisms, nor even a stepfather who gathers in 
the facetious offspring of other minds. He left us no 
anecdotes ; he was not a story-teller. Though often 
narrating significant incidents that happened to him- 
self or others, he would do this for the sake of some 
idea brought up by the conversation — never for the 
sake of causing laughter. Mr. Barrett Wendell gives 
this truthful impression of his conversation : 

**The normal impersonality, the animated objectivity 
of his talk, the frank, idiomatic raciness of his phrase, 
the wholesomeness of his nature, made you forget that he 
had ever written anything. You thought of him, by and 
by, just as a remarkably friendly human being. You 
forgot even that he was not exactly of an age with you. 
Like his own literary style, which kept pace so sensitively 
with the best literary feeling of his day, the man himself 
was steadily contemporary." 

The spirit and effect of Parkman's conversations 
were like those of his writings, though more fiery 
and intense. As he grew older he lost something of 
his early reserve, and became, at least with intimates, 
more interesting. In talk he never philosophized, 
never moralized, never posed as virtuous; all the 
same, he produced an elevating effect on those who 
heard him. Professor Fiske says: "What most im- 
pressed one in talking with him was the combination 
of power and alertness with extreme gentleness. "^ 

Parkman's friendship brings up the necessity of 
defining two important terms frequently used in this 

1 Introductory Essay, Ixxvii. 



356 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

portrait — spirituality and sympathy. As we have 
said, he showed little interest in religious, philan- 
thropic, affectional, and aesthetic matters. These 
limitations marked his lack of spirituality ; yet he was 
free from materialism. In considering his sympathies 
we must distinguish between Parkman as a citizen 
and Parkman as a friend. His sympathy had its nar- 
rowest range in citizenship, and its greatest force and 
freedom in friendship. Yet, speaking broadly of his 
character, he was kind-hearted rather than tender- 
hearted. The Puritan generally held him in reserve 
not only as to expression, but also as to feeling in 
matters relating to the inner life. A few exceptional 
incidents, however, that involved his deepest affec- 
tions, revealed a tenderness that struggled almost in 
vain for expression. Parkman's friendship was most 
helpful and satisfying. Its distinguishing qualities 
were persistence and sincerity. Conservatism here 
served a good purpose, keeping him to the last, in 
aims, qualities, and opinions, what he was in youth, 
and thus saving his friendships from variations due to 
growth on at least one side. He kept all the friends 
of his youth, and made few intimates outside of this 
circle. 

Sentiment never broke through his reserve, or 
troubled his wisdom, or cast a doubtful light over 
his expressions. His quick understanding, sincerity 
of interest, soundness of judgment, steadfastness, 
and the winning qualities of his nature — all gave a 
most assuring sense of value and reliability in his 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 357 

friendship. He was always ready to help a friend to 
a position, provided the applicant seemed fitted for the 
post; otherwise, he would not only refuse such aid, 
but oppose the appointment. Absence never made 
any break in his feeling; he took up an acquaint- 
ance again just where it had been left off. When 
too ill for social intercourse, the mere silent presence 
of a friend gave him pleasure. He had a comforting 
charity for those who were unsuccessful, and for all 
weaknesses of humanity, outside of unmanliness and 
meanness. It was not his habit to discuss or criticise 
his friends, unless their characters were especially 
under consideration; at such a time he would state 
frankly his opinions. The needy and suffering, young 
writers wanting counsel or materials from his ample 
stores, — all found him patient and generous. 

In looking back over his life one is struck with his 
prodigious strength of character. He was ready to 
face the universe if nature would play him fair. 
She had played him foul, yet she could not prevent 
his victory. In his patient fortitude under suffering, 
in his persistent industry despite the greatest obsta- 
cles, and in his fidelity to his ideals, Parkman was 
certainly one of the most heroic figures in the history 
of letters. 



APPENDIX A 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FRANCIS PARKMAN'S 
WRITINGS 

HISTOKICAL WORKS 
1851. Tlie Conspiracy of Pontiac. 2 vols. 

France and England in North America 

1865. Part I. The Pioneers of France in the New 

World. 1 vol. 

1867. Part II. The Jesuits in North America. 1 vol. 

1869. Part III. La Salle and the Discovery of the 
Great West. 1 vol. 

1874. Part IV. The Old Regime. 1 vol. 

1877. Part V. Count Frontenac and New France un- 
der Louis XIV. 1 vol. 

1884. Part VII. Montcalm and Wolfe. 2 vols. 

1892. Part VI. A Half-Century of Conflict. 2 vols. 

OTHER BOOKS 

1849. The Oregon Trail (first published in the Knicker- 
bocker Magazine in 1847). 1 vol. 
1856. Vassall Morton, a Novel. 1 vol. 

1866. The Book of Roses. 1 vol. 

He also wrote the Preface, and a translation of a Sketch 
of General Bouquet, which were prefixed to the reprint of 



360 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

the ''Historical Account of Bouquet's Expedition against 
the Ohio Indians in 1764," published by Robert Carter, 
Cincinnati, 1868. 

1885. ''Historic Handbook of the Northern Tour" — 
being narratives drawn from "Pontiac," 
"Pioneers," "Jesuits," " Front enac," and 
"Montcalm and Wolfe." 

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS 
Some of which are advance chapters of the histories. 

To the " Knickerbocker Magazine " (not including " The 
Oregon Trail "). 

1845, March. "The Ranger's Adventure." By a new 

Contributor. 
1845, April. "The Scalp Hunter." 
1845, June. "A Fragment of Family History." By 

the author of " The Scalp-Hunter." 
1845, Aug. "The New Hampshire Ranger." By 

Jonathan Carver, Jr., a poem. 
1845, Dec. "Satan and Dr. Carver." By Captain 

Jonathan Carver, Jr. 

To the "Christian Examiner" 

1851, May. " Indian Antiquities in North America " (a 
review of books by E. G. Squier and 
Lewis Morgan). 

1851, July. "Squier's Serpent Symbol," etc. A short 
book notice; unsigned. 

1853, January. "French's Historical Collections of 
Louisiana." (A short book notice.) 



APPENDIX A 361 

To the ^^ Atlantic Monthly" ^ 

Vol. Page Month Yeah 

*The Fleur-de-Lis at Port 

Eoyal 12 30 July 1863 

*TheFleur-de-Lis in Florida 12 225 August 1863 

*Tlie Spaniard and the Her- 
etic 12 537 November 1863 

*The Vengeance of Dominic 

de Gourgues 14 530 November 1864 

Life and Times of Red 

Jacket (Stone) 19 383 March 1867 

*The Founders of Montreal 19 723 June 1867 

Historical Inquiry concern- 
ing Henry Hudson (J. 

M. Read, Jr.) 19 764 June 1867 

History of New France 

(Charlevoix & Shea) 20 125 July 1867 

Madame Riedesel's Letters 

and Journals (Stone) 21 127 January 1868 
Charlevoix's History of 

New France 29 499 April 1872 

^Jesuits' Mission of Onon- 
daga in 1654 30 687 December 1872 

*Early Canadian Miracles 

and Martyrs 32 84 July 1873 

*A Great Deed of Arms 32 691 December 1873 

*Sir William Phips's At- 
tack on Quebec 38 719 December 1876 

*Wolfe on the Plains of 

Abraham 54 339 September 1884 

*The Battle of Lake George 54 444 October 1884 

1 The articles marked * were published as advance chapters of 
his histories. 



362 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

Vol. Pagb Month Tbab 

The Forests and the Census 55 835 June 1885 

*The Discovery of the E,ocky 

Mountains 61 783 June 1888 

,^ ., ,. (-67 314 March 1891 

*CaptureofLouisburgby U^ ^^^ ^g^^ 

theN.E.Mihtia ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^g^^ 

*Acadia, The Feudal (71 25 January 1893 
Chiefs of (71 201 February 1893 

To the "North American Eeview" 

Vol. Page 

74 147 James Fenimore Cooper. 

101 28 Manners and Customs of Primitive Indian 
Tribes. 

103 1 Indian Superstitions. 

107 370 Morgan's Bibliotheca Canadensis. 

*118 225 The Ancieu Eegime in Canada, 1663-1763. 

120 34 The Native Eaces of the Pacific States. 

120 469 Higginson's History of the United States. 

*125 427 Cavalier de La Salle. 

127 1 The Failure of Universal Suffrage. 

129 303 The Woman Question. 

130 16 The Woman Question Again. 

To "Tlie Critic'' 
1885, October 31. " Revocation of the Edict of Nantes." 

To " Tilton's Journal of Horticulture" 
1869 to 1871. Several articles referring to horticulture. 

To ''The Nation'' 

No. 

243 The Tale of the ''Ripe Scholar." 
585 D^couvertes et Etablissements des Frangais, etc. 
(by Pierre Margry). 



APPENDIX A 363 

No. 

618 Montcalm et le Canada Fran^ais. 

652 Une Colonie feodale en Amerique. 

666 Note on Rameau. 

680 Note on Eameau (Chronicle of the St Lawrence). 

683 Mr. Parkman and his Canadian Critics. 

702 Canada under the Administration of Lord Dufferin. 

780 Note on Joliet's map. 

878 The Kose. 

935 A Book about Eoses. 

1085 A French Memoir of Colonial History. 

1143 Note on an Album paleographique. 

1189 The Fall of New France. 

1193 Note on Indian Sketches. 

1237 Une Pelerinage au Pays d'^vangeline. 

1347 Appendiculse Historicse. 

1472 Lake St. Louis. 

To the, " Bostoyi Daily Advertiser" 

(This list is incomplete. His articles were generally 
signed F. P.) 

1861. Wm. H. Russell and our Duty. 

1862, Jan. 8. "Where are our Leaders ? 

1862, Oct. 14. Why our Army is not the Best in the 
World. 

1862, Oct. 17. Conservatism. 

1863, June. The Weak Side of our Armies. 
1863, July. Aristocrats and Democrats. 

1863, July. Our Best Class and the National Politics. 

The Nation's Ordeal. 
1863, July. The Chiefs of the Nation. 

To " Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography " 

1866-67. The articles on Frontenac, La Salle, and 
Montcalm. 



364 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

To ^^ Harper's Monthly ^^ 
1864, November. Exploring the Magalloway. 
1890, August. A Convent at Rome. 

PAMPHLETS 

1887. Some Reasons against Woman SuflErage. 
1890. Our Common Schools. 

TRANSLATIONS 

The "Jesuits" and the "Pioneers" were translated 
into French and published in 1874 and 1882 by Didier et 
Cie., Paris. Parkman disapproved of these translations, 
which were garbled. 

Three of his histories were published in German, viz. : 

"The Pioneers," Auerbach, Stuttgart, 1875. 

"The Old Regime," Auerbach, Stuttgart, 1876. 

" The Jesuits," Abenheim, Berlin, 1878. 

And "The Failure of Universal Suffrage" was issued 
by Springer in Berlin, 1879. 



APPENDIX B 



From ''The Knickerbocker," August, 1845 

"THE NEW HAMPSHIRE RANGER 

" In the Old French War, a body of Rangers were employed on 
scouting expeditions around Lake George, between the hostile mili- 
tary posts of Ticonderoga and Fort William Henry. Their most 
celebrated leader. Major Rogers, with a large part of the men, were 
from New Hampshire. The service they were engaged in was of 
the most severe and dangerous kind. In parties varying from two 
or three to a hundred or more, they scoured the woods at all sea- 
sons, to seize stragglers, intercept convoys, and encounter the par- 
ties of Canadians and Indians that the French were constantly 
sending out to annoy the English ; and whom, unless there was 
a great disparity of force, the Rangers almost always defeated and 
beat back to Canada. 

*' No ordered rank and measured tramp, 

No restless flash of steel ; 
Nor the long line of dancing plumes, 

And ringing trumpet-peal! 
The soldiers of the wilderness, 

A rough and hardy band, 
In woodland garb, with woodland arms. 

We guard this forest land. 
'T is ours to breathe the battle smoke. 

To range the trackless wood, 
To struggle with the howling storm. 

And swim the flashing flood. 
Deep in the gloomy forest, 

Unseen by human eye, 



366 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

We track the foe, we strike the blow, 

And, nameless all, we die. 
The scarlet coat, the waving plume — 

Good for the triumph day ! 
The hunter's frock, the cap of fur — 

Good for the battle fray ! 
Gay warrior of England, 

Idling the whole day long, 
Drink and laugh and gaily dance, 

And shout the camp-fire song. 
In William Henry's sheltering walls 

Enjoy thy mirth and cheer, 
We guard the dangerous wilderness — 

No danger can come near. 
Yet do not deem that I complain ; 

Soldier, I would not change, 
For thy safe and idle slavery, 

My own free forest range. 
I love the savage war-whoop. 

And the whisthng of the ball ; 
The woods, the rocks, the boiling streams, 

I love them, one and all. 
And yet their memory is entwined 

With thoughts of sore distress, 
Of famine, grief, and danger, 

And bitter weariness. 
For the ranger's gun has echoed 

From a thousand pathless mountains ; 
And the ranger's blood has stained with red 

A thousand limpid fountains. 
Some of our band lie wasting 

In the dark noisome dell; 
No friendly ear could their death-cries hear, 

None lived their fate to tell. 
On stern and wild Agiochook 

The whitening bones are spread; 
The fish of crystal Horicon 

Are feedincr on our dead. 



APPENDIX B 367 

The ravens of Oswego, 

Slow settling on the plain, 
Tear vainly at the sinewy limbs, 

And soar away again. 
Some have died by famine, 

Some by the headlong faU, 
Some by wave, and some by frost, 

Some by the foeman's ball. 
Among these wild green mountains. 

And o'er this gentle flood. 
In cold and heat, by day and night, 

Have I in battle stood. 
The sultry breath of August, 

December's breezes bleak ; 
The sleet, the snow, the rushing rain, 

Have beat upon my cheek : 
And Nature, I have gazed on thee 

In thy calmest, sweetest hour ; 
And I have seen thy frowning face 

In all thy wrath and power : 
Thy gentle smile, thy whispering voice. 

Have ever a charm for me; 
But I love as well thy lowering brow 

Of angTy majesty. 
I love thee even 'mid winter's cold, 

When trackless lies the snow, 
And the boughs of the loaded fir-tree bend 

Into the drifts below : 
When in the sharp still evening 

The sky is flushed with red, 
And o'er the wide white wilderness 

The crimson glow is shed ; 
And in the thickest forest 

We heap the snow around, 
And spread the boughs of evergreen 

Upon the frozen ground. 
And through the long dull night we hear. 
On that cold couch reclined. 



368 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

The music of the groaning ice. 

The howling of the wind : 
While high among the snowy trees 

Swirls up the roaring blaze, 
And the bright swarm of dancing sparks 

Far in the darkness plays. 
I lie and watch them wandering, 

And gleaming wide and bright, 
Like fire-flies by the orchard side, 

On some soft summer night. 
But how the blasts sweep moaning 

O'er the solid lake below, 
And scatter in the bright moonbeams 

The glistening flakes of snow ! 
And in the tortured forest 

The pine-trees tough and old 
Crack sharply with a sudden sound, 

As if rent with the biting cold. 
Woe to the wretch who wanders lost 

In the drear wood to-night ! 
Like the sculptor's chiselled marble 

He '11 be ere morning light. 

But the fierce heats of August, 

The pale sun's noontide blaze, 
When each hot mountain slumbers 

Dim in the sultry haze ! 
No song of bird, no rustling leaf. 

No stirring of the breeze ; 
Nought but the drowsy hum of gnats, 

Beneath the withering trees ! 
With the red sun's glare, the breathless air, 

And the faint and pale-blue sky, 
With the sleeping flood, and drooping wood, 

The heart sinks languidly. 
On yonder rich and verdant shore. 

Where the swelling forests spread, 
Glistening beneath the fiery rays 

On the shrinking foliage shed, 



APPENDIX B 369 

I know a cool and limpid spring ; 

Its laughing waters gay 
Steal rippling through the velvet grass, 

Now murmuring on their way. 
I could fling down my weary oar, 

And lay me by its side, 
Bathe my hot brow and swelling veins, 

And watch the waters glide ; 
The cold and gushing waters, 

The pebbles clear and white, 
The maples and young linden trees 

That shade them from the light ! 

Would, by that merry sparkling spring, 

Beneath the fresh cool shade, 
I might sit and hear the sweet low voice 

Of Hampshire's blue-eyed maid 1 
Mark her heart's soft emotions, 

By many a sigh confest, 
By the gleaming of her melting eye. 

The swelling of her breast. 
Then would I loathe the bugle-note, 

And curse the battle-cry. 
And know no other joy on earth 

Than soft tranquillity. 
But let the poet muse and moan 

In fancied desperation. 
The tame voluptuary melt, 

In selfish lamentation : 
Man was made to toil and fight, 

And not to dream and sigh. 
And woman fires his failing heart 

To deeds of gallantry. 

Best I love the clear cool morn 

Of the bright October day ; 
When the mountains glow, and the lake below 

Reflects the colors gay. 
24 



370 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

When the fresli woods are ringing 

With the screaming of the jay ; 
Where, through the ruddy maple leaves, 

Pours the sun's crimsoned ray : 
When the stiffened leaves are rustling, 

And dropping from the trees, 
And the dark blue water ripples 

In the light morning breeze : 
And far aloft against the sky 

The mountain summits rear 
Their black rocks, gay %vith leafy plumes, 

In the sharp atmosphere. 
Then, by the island's grassy bank, 

I fling me on the ground, 
And snuff the breeze, like a deer 

That scents the distant hound. 
'T is then the fire of health and youth 

Burns high in every breast, 
And the wild zeal to dare and do, 

And scorn of slothful rest. 
'T is then our thoughts are proudest; 

The dearest joy we know, 
Would be to hear the war-whoop ring, 

To grapple with the foe. 
The feelings of my earlier youth 

I may recall again, 
When I was a lonely wanderer 

In the wild land of Spain. 
And up the rough Sierra 

By the faint moon I rode. 
And the pale light, so softly bright, 

Rock, gulf^ and torrent showed. 
I looked on her : it seemed to me 

That I low sounds could hear, 
As if the spirits of the rocks 

Were whispering in my ear. 
And strange vague thoughts came thronging. 

Thickly and dreamily ; 



APPENDIX B 371 

Thoughts of loves and battles 

In ages long gone by. 
O'er rock and stone my steed tramped on ; 

Wild chafed the haughty beast ; 
He champed the bit, he shook the rein, 

And tossed his sable crest. 
Mine was the youthful recklessness, 

The high presumptuous soul, 
Soaring elate, defying fate, 

Disdaining self-control. 
Thus up the steep and rocky path, 

Careering carelessly, 
Fearing nought and heeding nought. 

Went my brave steed and I. 
And then a softening memory 

Rose up within my breast. 
Of that, of all things on the earth, 

I 've longest loved and best. 
It was of dear New-England, 

Her mountains and her woods, 
Her savage rocks, her headlong streams. 

Her pure and gentle floods. 
And now, from wandering returned, 

I 've trod thy shore again, 
Land barren of the corn and wine. 

Fruitful of fearless men ! 
Blooming with bright-eyed laughing girls, 

The lovely flowers that spring 
Luxmiant from thy rocky soil, 

A matchless offering 1 
And I have armed me in her cause 

In this her day of woe, 
Nor vainly fight to shield her right 

Against her hated foe. 
But how in such a scene as this, 

Can thoughts of slaughter rise? 
The rich green hill, the waters still. 
The pure and amber skies: 



372 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

When nature's sweet and powerful voice 

Whispers of peace and rest, 
And to a tranquil tenderness 

Would soothe the unquiet breast. 
Our toil and woe are weU nigh done ; 

Strain, comrades, at the oar ! 
There lie the walls that shelter us, 

On yonder guarded shore. 
I see the frowning rampart. 

The rigid palisade, 
And slowly rolled in swelling fold, 

Old England's flag displayed. 
Hark to the roUing of the drum, 

And the gay trumpet-note, 
That, softened on the greedy ear, 

O'er the calm waters float ! 
And see ! and see ! on yonder plain. 

The long and glittering line ; 
The red coats glow in the evening rays. 

The bristling bayonets shine ; 
How, 'twixt those shadowy western hills, 

Upon the bright array 
The sinking sun pom's duskily 

His last departing ray I 
Where 's the cold eye that would not glow, 

At yonder gallant sight ! 
Where the tame heart that would not beat 

With a high and wild delight I 
I love that broad red banner. 

And the stately soldiery 
That bear it on through blood and smoke, 

Always triumphantly. 
Brave Briton, I could ever be 

A comrade by thy side 
Around the merry camp-fire. 

Or in the battle's tide : 
But I cannot brook thy haughty brow, 

Thy bearing proud and high ; 



APPENDIX B 373 

Thou 'It make a cold and disdainful friend, 

But a gallant enemy I 
I have dreamed it, and I know it. 

The day is coming yet, 
When axe and rifle-butt shall clash 

With British bayonet I 
No more through dark and pathless woods 

We '11 hunt the savage foe, 
Or track the flying Frenchman, 

By his footprints on the snow; 
But hand to hand, and steel to steel, 

On the broad open field. 
We '11 try who blenches in the strife, 

Who shall be last to yield I 
And I have dreamed it in my sleep, 

How the bullets stormed like hail. 
And the red bristling ranks went down 

As wheat bends to the gale ! 
As I have dreamed it in my sleep, 

That sight mine eyes shall see ; 
And when that bloody morning comes, 

Right welcome shall it be. 

Capt. Jonathan Carver, Jr." 

Cambridge, Mass., 
June 25, 1845. 



APPENDIX C 



THEODORE PARKER'S CRITICISM OF 
"PONTIAC" 

Boston, 22 Dec, 1851. 

Dear Sir, — I have lately read your work on ' ' Pon- 
tiac," etc., with much pleasure. I have gained a good 
deal of information from the hook which relates to a 
period and place where I had not studied the Indians 
much. On the whole, it seems to me the book is highly 
creditable to you — to your industry and your good sense. 
But you will be likely to get mere praise enough, and 
asked me to speak discriminatingly of the work, so I will 
write down things which occurred to me in reading the 
book, and in studying some parts of it. I will speak of 
the substance, the arrangement and the style; of the 
timber, the^?^^^, and the finish of it. 

I. Of the substance, that is the sentiments and ideas. 
You evidently have a fondness for the Indian — not a 
romantic fondness, but one that has been tempered by 
sight of the fact. Yet I do not think you do the Indian 
quite justice ; you side rather too strongly with the white 
man and against the red. I think you bring out the 
vices of the Indian into more prominence than those of 
the European — which were yet less excusable. The 
treachery which you censure in the Indian was to him no 
more a violation of any sentiment or idea that he felt or 
knew than it was to a Briton to fight with powder and 
balls. This treachery is not specific of Indians; but 



APPENDIX C 375 

generic of all races in a low state of development. It 
seems to me Pontiac was much more excusable than the 
Paxton men, the Owens, and the like. It seems to me 
that the whites are not censured so much as they de- 
serve for their conduct toward the Indians in three 
particulars : 

1. In the matter of rum, which the Christian brought 
to the Savage. 

2. In the matter of women — whom the Christian took 
from the Savage as concubines and then deserted when the 
time came. 

3. In the matter of treachery and cruelty which the 
whites too often displayed. 

I have thought you were a little unjust to the Quakers. 
But here I have so little direct and positive knowledge 
that I hesitate in my judgment. 

One thing is curious in history: — the Teutonic Race in 
all its three great divisions, — the Goths, Germans, and 
Scandinavians — is naturally exclusive, and loves to ex- 
terminate the neighboring tribes. On the other side, the 
Celts and Greco-Italian stock assimilate with other tribes. 
The history of America shows the same thing in the 
conduct of the English and the French toward the Indians. 
It would have enriched your book a little to have called 
attention to that fact — not generally known. It always 
enriches a special history to drop into it universal laws or 
any general rules of conduct which distinguish one nation 
from another. 

The facts of history which you set down seem generally 
well chosen. The historian cannot tell all. He must 
choose such as, to him, most clearly set forth the Idea of 
the nation — or man — he describes. Bancroft chooses 
one set of facts, Hildreth another, and how different 
the New England of Bancroft from Hildreth's New 
England ! 



376 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

So mucli for the material — wliicli is mainly good tim- 
ber, — now a word of the frame and plan. So 

II. Of the distribution of the parts. The title indi- 
cates that the conspiracy of Pontiac is the chief theme. 
But in the book itself it seems to me this is not exactly 
so, that other things are not quite enough subordinated to 
the main theme, so as to give unity to the whole book. 
The ba7'n is a little too near the house and the shed a little 
too prominent for the general effect of the house itself. 
This appears as you look over the table of contents, when 
Pontiac and his scheme are not the central object about 
which the rest is grouped. So the book lacks the dramatic 
unity which is necessary for the artistic treatment of such 
a subject. Pontiac does not appear so important in the 
titles of the chapters as the title-page seems to demand. 
Then the book lacks a sufficient conclusion, and ends 
abruptly. You do not tell the effect which his death has 
on Indian affairs. A special history like this requires at 
the end a general summary with the philosophical reflec- 
tions which have grown out of the historical treatment of 
the theme. 

It seems to me it would have been better to have 
divided the matter something after this line : 

Introduction. Containing all the general matter relar 
tive to the Indians, their origin, geographical distribution, 
language, arts, agriculture, domestic, political and relig- 
ious institutions. This is now too much scattered about 
in the book. 

Book I. History of the Indians in the connection with 
the Europeans up to the time of the general rising. 

Book II. History of Pontiac and his efforts to overcome 
the Europeans. 

Book HI. Result of the movement on the Indian peo- 
ple, and its effect on their subsequent history. Then it 
seems to me there should have been more and more 



APPENDIX C 377 

obvious unity in the book; now it seems as if the materials 
have been collected without a defiuite aim, and that the 
plan was not quite complete until the book was done. So 
much of the plan and frame. Now a word of the finish. 

III. Of the style of the book. Some passages in it are 
very well written; in general the style is good, simple, 
natural, easy. But there is a general lack of severity of 
style, for which the great Master of Roman history is so 
remarkable. Some passages remind me of Melville and 
Headley — whom you would not like to be like. There 
is a lack of what is characteristic. This appears — 

1. In the description of j^lcLces. You do not tell what 
kind of trees, etc., there were, only trees — leaving us to 
guess whether they were pines or palms, bushes or tall 
trees. 

2. In the description of persons, the book lacks por- 
traits. Wolfe is well done, so is Montcalm (the account of 
Braddock is well done). But the picture of Pontiac is not 
adequate to his important place in the history. It strikes 
me that Johnson is not very well done. Some passages 
are left too imperfect. It seems as if you got vexed with 
the thing and struck out a little recklessly, to hit or miss 
as it might happen. The style of the book often indicates 
haste — as do almost all American books — like every- 
thing else we do. 

There, sir, is not there a list of faults for you? Yes, more 
than all your critics in the reviews, I suppose, have 
found with you. But if I did not expect you and think 
you capable of better things than you have done yet, I 
should not go to the trouble of pointing out all these 
faults. You seem to have chosen literature for your pro- 
fession, and history for your special department thereof, 
and I do so love to see literary conscientiousness applied 
to explain the meaning of human history and convey its 



378 A LIFE OF FRANCIS PARKMAN 

lesson to mankind, that I have taken the pains to point 
out particular things in which your book might have been 
made better. You have already received so much com- 
mendation that it is not necessary I should go into the 
pleasanter business of telling you how many things I like 
in the book. Believe me, 

Truly yours, 

Theo. Parker. 
Francis Parkman, Jr., Esq. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Adams, Eliza, 1. 

Agassiz, 261. 

Agassiz Museum, the, 46. 

Albany, 13, 60. 

Algeciras, 90. 

Allston Street, No. 4 A, 11. 

Alps, the, 67, 68. 

Alton, 13. 

American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences, the, xii, 41, 353. 

American Antiquarian Society, 
the, 2, 41. 

American Folk-Lore Society, the, 
41. 

American School for Classical 
Studies, the, at Athens, 252. 

Americans, contrasted by Park- 
man with Englishmen, 86. 

Anantz, 143. 

" Anciens Canadiens," De Gasp^'s, 
212. 

Andeer, 68, 100. 

Androscoggin River, the, 13. 

Angier, John, 43. 

Anti-slavery Question, the, 287. 

Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, 310. 

Apaches, the, 286. 

Appian Way, Cambridge, 12. 

" Appleton's Cyclopedia of Ameri- 
can Biography," 363. 

Arapaho, 286. 

Archaeological Institute of Amer- 
ica, the, 36, 41, 251. 



Archives of the Marine and Colo- 
nies, the, at Paris, 156. 

Arizona, 286. 

" Atlantic Magazine," the, xii, 268, 
361. 

Athens, 252. 

Austen, Jane, 348. 

Ayers, Mrs., 12. 

" Baby's Deljut," the, 347. 

Bachelder, 20. 

BaiaB, 96. 

Baltimore, 17. 

Bancroft, 30, 182, 212, 283, 287. 

Bandelier, 252. 

Bangor, Me., 15. 

Bannestier, 252. 

Barnston, 14. 

Barre, Charlotte, 232. 

Barye, 195, 343. 

Basic, 86. 

Batiscan River, the, xi, 37. 

Beaufort, S. C, 36. 

Beck, Dr., 18. 

Bemis Camp, the, 38. 

Benedictines, the, 149; church of, 
149, 150. 

Bert, Paul, 152. 

Bigelow, Catherine ScoUay, mar- 
ries Parkman, 27 ; her children, 
28; death of, 28, 334; 189; in 
the home, 337. 

Bigelow, Dr. Jacob, 27. 



382 



INDEX 



Bigelow, Mary, 27 ; assumes care 
and education of Parkman's 
children, 28. 

Blackhawk, 144. 

Black Hill range, the, 323. 

Blossburg, 16. 

Bologna, 108. 

" Bombastes Furioso," 105, 347. 

" Book of Roses," Parkman's, 32, 
34. 

Boone, Daniel, 284. 

Boston, England, 2. 

Boston, Mass., 1, 2, 5, 11, 15, 27, 
29, 38, 47, 51, 80, 115, 129, 143, 
172, 319, 326, 343. 

Boston Association, the, 5. 

Boston Athenaeum, the, 34. 

Boston Common, 42, 143, 343. 

" Boston Daily Advertiser," the, 
257, 274, 279, 282, 288, 363. 

Bostonian Society, the, 41. 

Bourlamaque, letters from Mont- 
calm to, 158, 178. 

Bourke, Captain, 252. 

Bowdoin Square, No. 5, 11, 347. 

Braddock, 215. 

Brattleboro, Vt., 25. 

Brebceuf, Jean de, 220. 

Breck, Hannah, 1. 

Brighton, 102. 

Brimmer, Hon. Martin, xii ; Park- 
man's letters to, xiii, 80, 83, 321. 

British Museum, the, 158. 

Brook Farm, 25. 

Brookline, Mass., 27. 

Brooks, Rev. Edward, 2, 6. 

Brooks, Joanna Cotton, 2. 

Brooks, Peter Chardon, 6. 

Brown, Abigail, 2. 

Brown, Rev. John, 2. 

Bruce, Robert, 202. 

Buade, Louis de, see Frontenac, 
Count. 

Buddhism, 313. 

Buffalo, 16. 



Burke, 74. 
Burlington, 13. 
Bussey Institute, the, 32. 
Byron, 199, 347. 

Cabotsville, 16. 

Cahokia, 70. 

Caldwell, 13. 

California, 283. 

Calton Hill, 69. 

Cambridge, Mass., 80. 

Cambridge, Vt., 14, 143. 

Campbell, 347. 

Canaan, 14. 

Canada, 13; Parkman's trip to, 
15, 147, 152; the Catholic 
Church in, 148 ; the monasteries 
of, 154; 172, 187; early mission- 
aries of, 208 ; the old re'gime in, 
213; 251, 313, 320,321,331. 

Capuchin Convent, the, 112, 149. 

Cara, 97. 

Carlisle, 17. 

Cary, George Blankern, 18, 22. 

Casgrain, Abbe H. R., xii ; Park- 
man's letters to, xiii, 136, 204, 
205, 211, 213, 278, 283, 314. 

Castel Termini, 93. 

Catholicism, 207. 

Centre Harbor, 13. 

" Century Magazine," the, xii. 

Chambersburg, 17. 

Chambly, 15. 

Champlain, Lake, 13 ; Parkman's 
visit to, 15, 220. 

Champlain, Samuel de, 220. 

Channing, Prof. Edward T., 73. 

Channing, "William E., 312. 

Charles II., 202. 

Chatillon, Henry, 35 ; Parkman's 
estimate of, 115. 

Chaudiere, the, 35. 

Chauncy Hall School, the, 12, 73. 

Chauncy Place, Boston, 72. 

Cheltenham, 158. 



INDEX 



383 



Chester Factory, 16. 

Chestnut Street, No. 50, 29, 342, 
350. 

Cheviot, the, 69. 

Chiavenna, 112. 

" Chicken," the, 105. 

Child, Prof., 79. 

Chit-Chat Club, the, 16. 

" Christian Examiner," the, 28, 
360. 

Christianity, 313. 

Civil War, the, 268, 281, 287. 

Clarke, 21. 

Class of 1844, 255. 

Cloaca Maxima, the, at Kome, 192. 

Coan, Dr. Titus M., xii. 

Coire, 100. 

Colebrook, 13. 

Colico, 111. 

Coliseum, the, at Rome, 192. 

Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 
the, Publications of, xii, 6 ; 41. 

Comanches, the, 286. 

Como, Lake, 66, 69. 

Condottiere Colleoni, statue of, 
139. 

Connecticut Lake, 14. 

Connecticut River, the, 15. 

" Conspiracy of Pontiac," the, 16, 
24 ; Parkman begins work on, 
25,325; completed, 27, 34 ; 123, 
154, 168, 170, 173; declined by 
publisher, 188; publication of, 
189; 201, 211, 237; Parker's 
criticism of, 374-378. 

" Convent at Rome," a, xiii. 

Cooke, George Willis, xiii. 

Coolidge, Dr. Algernon, 39. 

Coolidge, J. T., Jr., 39, 352. 

Coolidge, Mrs. J. T., Jr., poem by, 
210; 352. 

Cooper, James Feniraore, 52, 68, 
78, 143, 144, 199, 219. 

Cordner, Rev. Dr., 345. 

Corning, 16. 



Cottage Street, Brookline, Park- 
man's home on, 27. 
Cotton, Joanna, 2. 
Cotton, John \ 2, 5. 
Cotton, John 2, 2. 
Cotton, Rowland, 2. 
Crawford, Ethan, 99. 
Crawford, Tom, 56. 
Crawford Notch, 13, 14, 53,54, 63. 
" Critic," the, xii, 362. 
Cushing, 252. 
Cushing, Thomas, 72. 

Dana, Charles A., 25. 

Daulac, 219. 

Denison, Rev. John, 2. 

Detroit, 16 ; siege of, 326. 

Devil's Hole, the, 16. 

Diaries, Parkman's, xiii, 52, 53, 

54-70, 85-123, 132, 133, 143, 

148-152, 192-194, 196, 197,201, 

202, 217, 267, 283,309. 
Dinwiddie, 183. 
Divinity Hall, No. 7, 13, 19. 
Dixville Notch, 13. 
Dorchester, Mass., 1. 
Dorchester Avenue, Milton Lower 

Falls, Parkman's home at, 27. 
Dumas, Alexandre, 348. 
Du Maurier, 348. 
"Dumb Boy of Genoa," the, 105. 

Edinburgh, 69, 202. 

Eliot, President Charles W., 256, 
257. 

Eliot, S., 106. 

EUiott, Dr. S. R., recollections of 
Parkman, 52. 

Ellis, Dr. George E., xii ; Park- 
man's letter to, xiii, 315 ; 166. 

England, 146, 187, 190, 196, 222, 
279, 320. 

Englishmen, contrasted by Park- 
man with Americans, 86. 

" English 6," 264. 



384 



INDEX 



Essex, 13. 

Europe, Parkman's visit to, 1 5. 
Everett, Edward, 243. 
" Exploring the Magalloway," xiii, 
60. 

" Failure of Universal Suffrage," 
Parkman's, 262, 267, 268, 269, 
270, 272, 273, 275, 276, 277, 287. 

Farnham, C. H., xii ; Parkman 
camps with, 37. 

Farnsworth, 20. 

Ferland, 206. 

Fernaudina, 36. 

Ferrera, the valley of, 67. 

Feudalism, 207. 

Fifth Symphony, the, 194. 

Fiske, Prof. John, xii; on Park- 
man's perseverance under diffi- 
culties, 179, 216, 231,355. 

Fletcher, Miss, 252. 

Florence, 132. 

Florida, Parkman's journey to, 36. 

"Forum," the, xii. 

Fourierites, the, 120. 

France, 146, 147, 187, 190, 219, 
225, 233, 320. 

" France in the New World," 327, 
331. 

Franconia Notch, 13. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 278. 

Frederick the Great, 220. 

French and Indian War, the, 51,75. 

French Canadians, the, Parkman 
visits, 35, 285. 

" French Explorers in the Great 
West," 331. 

French Revolution, the, 291. 

Fresh Pond, 130. 

Frog Pond, the, 42. 

Frontenac, Count, 207, 215, 220, 
224, 225, 331. 

" Frontenac and New France un- 
der Louis XIV.," publication of, 
36 ; 224, 225. 



Frothingham, Rev. 0. B., his 
" Francis Parkman," xii, 6, 43, 
130,307,310,311,347. 

Garden Street, Cambridge, 12. 

Garneau, 186, 206, 212. 

Garnier, 221. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 278. 

Gaspe, De, 212. 

George, Lake, 13 ; Parkman's 
fondness for, 14 ; Parkman's 
visits to, 15, 36, 60, 66, 67, 220, 
267. 

George, Fort, 36. 

German Spas, the, 39. 

Giarri, 109. 

Gibraltar, 64, 65, 90. 

Girgenti, 116. 

Glens Falls, 13, 60. 

Godkin, E. L., on Parkman's per- 
sonal appearance, 9. 

" Golden Farmer," the, 105. 

Gould, Benjamin Apthorp, 12, 20, 
75 ; letters from Parkman to, 
177, 293. 

Gray, 261. 

Great Barrington, 16. 

Grenada, 132. 

Grisons, the, valleys of, 100. 

Giuseppe, Parkman's guide, 98, 
150. 

Gury, 152. 

Haggard, Rider, 348. 

Hale, Hon. George S., xii ; Park- 
man's visit to, 14, 336 ; letters 
from Parkman to, 19, 22, 23, 80. 

" Half Century of Conflict," a, 14 ; 
publication of, 39 ; 143,160,177; 
revision planned of, 178; 215, 
285, 352. 

Hall, Caroline, 2 ; sketch of, 6-8 ; 
1 1, 45 ; letter from Parkman to, 
133 ; death of, 337. 

Hall, Nathaniel, 2, 6, 42. 



INDEX 



385 



Hamilton, Alexander, 277. 

Hankredge, Sarah, 2. 

Hanover Street, 45. 

Hansen, Mr., 63. 

" Harper's Magazine," 14, 60, 61, 
151,364. 

Harrisburg, 16, 17. 

Harrisse, Mr., letter from Park- 
man to, 156. 

Harvard College, xii, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 
12, 15, 35, 38, 40, 44, 52, 74, 75, 
82, 83, 132, 146, 152, 156, 200, 
254, 255, 261, 262, 264, 343. 

Harvard Law School, the, 15, 79, 
80, 83, 120, 130, 133, 146, 200, 
321. 

Harvard Natural History Society, 
the, 1 6 ; Parkman's collection of 
minerals presented to, 44. 

Harvard Theological School, the, 
259. 

Hasty Pudding Club, the, 16. 

Haverhill, Mass., 2. 

Higginson, Col. T. W., letter from 
Parkman to, 272. 

Highlands of Scotland, the, 69. 

Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, xii. 

Holworthy Hall, No, 9, 12, 76. 

Hope Gate, the, 15. 

Hopper, the, 16. 

Hotel de France et de Bath, 29. 

Howe, Lord, 222. 

Hugo, Victor, 348. 

Hunt, William Morris, 18, 98. 

Huntington, Bishop, on Francis 
Parkman (father), 4. 

Hurd, Dr. Isaac, on Francis Park- 
man (father), 4. 

Illinois Eiver, the, 35. 

Incarnation, Marie de 1', 221. 

Indians, the, Parkman's study of, 
15, 24, 35, 75, 84, 134, 136, 142, 
143, 144, 145, 147, 190,217-219; 
285. 



Institute of 1770, the, 16. 
I. O. H. Society, the, 16. 
Irving, Washington, 69. 
Isles of Shoals, the, 352. 
Italy, 65, 87; ladies of, 113; 148, 
192. 

Jacksonville, 36. 

Jamaica Park, 32. 

Jamaica Plain, Mass., 11. 

Jamaica Pond, 27, 29, 312, 350. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 278. 

Jericho, 13. 

Jesuits, the, 66, 144, 152, 153,217, 

220, 225, 301, 313. 
" Jesuits in North America," the, 

84, 208, 232, 331. 
Jogues, 221,308. 
Johnson, 14. 
Johnson, Dr., 347. 
Journal of Horticulture, Tilton's, 

32, 362. 

Keene, N. H., 14. 
Keokuk, 35. 

"King's Bridge Cottage," 106. 
"Knickerbocker Magazine," the, 
17, 22, 81, 360. 

Lafitan, 144. 

Laloutre, 221. 

Lancaster, 13. 

Laramie, Fort, 134. 

"La Salle," 156; completion of, 
172 ; 178, 221, 226, 227, 228, 229, 
236, 255. 

La SaUe, Cavalier de, 156, 177, 
215, 225; Parkman's descrip- 
tion of, 226-229; 308. 

"Last Supper," the. Da Vinci's, 
193, 194. 

Laval, Bishop, 220. 

Laval University, 40. 

Lebanon Springs, 16. 

Lee, 16. 



25 



386 



INDEX 



Lee, F., 105. 
Lee, Francis L., 31. 
Lexington, Mass., 6. 
Lilium auratum, the, 31. 
Liliuvi Parkmanni, the, 31. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 278. 
Lindsay, Sir David, 347. 
Literary and Historical Society of 

Quebec, the, 41. 
Little Harbor, 39. 
Little Magalloway Ri^er, the, 13. 
Lodi, the bridge of, 194. 
London, contrasted by Parkman 

with Paris, 88; 108, 172. 
Loudon Society of Antiquarians, 

the, 41. 
Longfellow, Henry W., 25, 348. 
Long Sault, the, 34, 219. 
Louis, Dr., 133. 
Louis XIV., 147. 
Louisburg, 36. 
Louvre, the, 21. 
Lowell, Rev. Charles, 25. 
Lowell, James Russell, 25, 26, 349. 
Lowell, Hon. John, xii; on Rev. 

Francis Parkman, 5; 186, 188, 

306. 
Loyola, 226. 
Luigi, Parkman's guide, see Ran- 

nesi Luigi. 
"Lyndhurst," 11. 

" McClure's Magazine," xii. 

McGill University, 40. 

Mackinaw, 16. 

Madrid, 39. 

Magalloway River, the, 13, 57, 58, 
60. 

Maine, Parkman's visits to, 15, 24. 

Maisonneuve, 232, 301. 

Malta, 115. 

Mance, Mademoiselle, 232. 

" Manners and Customs of Primi- 
tive Indian Tribes," Parkman's, 
271. 



Marengo, 194. 

Margry, Pierre, 155, 156; Park- 
man's letters to, 157, 173, 186; 
252. 

Marquette, Parkman's description 
of, 221. 

Marston, W. A., 106. 

Martineau, Rev. James, 311. 

Massachusetts Hall, No. 24, 13; 
No. 21, 13. 

Massachusetts Historical Society, 
the. Proceedings of, xii, 6, 41 ; 
Parkman presents his collections 
to, 160-161 ; 317. 

Massachusetts Horticultural So- 
ciety, the, elects Parkman a life 
member, 30; 32, 41. 

Medicine Bow range, the, 323. 

Medford, Mass., 2, 6, 12, 42, 43, 
44, 45, 47, 72, 89, 319. 

Medicis, Marie de, 220. 

Memphremagog, Lake, 15, 61. 

Menendez, 220. 

Messina, 94, 115, 149. 

Mexico, the Gulf of, 177. 

Miehele, 118; described by Park- 
man, 119. 

Michigan, 144. 

Middlesex Fells, the, 12, 43, 106, 
319. 

Milan, 87, 99, 193. 

Milan Cathedral, the, 193. 

Millerites, the, 120. 

Milton, John, 347. 

Milton Lower Falls, 27. 

Minot, F., 106. 

Miscellaneous Papers, Parkman's, 
240. 

Missionaries, the, 66, 208. 

Mohawks, the, 15. * 

Mohawk Valley, the, 197. 

Moliere, 347. 

Montcalm, Marquis de, letters to 
Bourlamaque from, 158, 178; 
173, 215, 334. 



INDEX 



887 



" Montcalm and Wolfe," 15 ; pub- 
lication of, 36 ; 39 ; Parkman's 
general intention concerning, 
173 ; 177 ; chastened diction of, 
203 ; regarded by Parkman as 
■his best work, 204; 222, 224, 
255, 280. 

Monte Pellegrino, 65. 

Montmagny, 232. 

Montreal, Parkman's visits to, 15, 
28, 34, 36 ; Parkman's descrip- 
tion of the founding of, 232. 

Morris, 25. 

Motley, 123. 

Mount Auburn Cemetery, 40. 

Mount Desert, 336. 

Murdock's Tavern, 115. 

"My Fellow Clerk," 105. 

Naples, 65, 95, 107, 110; women 
of, 112; 194. 

" Nation," the, xiii, 213, 242, 272, 
348, 362. 

" Neptune," the, 224. 

New England, 144, 147, 148, 196, 
206, 208, 218, 253, 285. 

New England Historic Genealogi- 
cal Society, the, 41. 

" New England Magazine," the, 
xiii. 

New France, 219, 224. 

"New Hampshire Ranger," the, 
365. 

New Mexico, 286. 

New North Church, the, in Bos- 
ton, 3, 75. 

Newport, 16. 

New York, 144. 

New York City, 25, 326. 

Niagara, 16. 

Niagara, Fort, 16. 

Nipissing, Lake, 35. 

North Adams, 16. 

" North American Review," the, 
253, 271, 283, 287, 288, 362. 



Northampton, 27. 
North Yarmouth, Me., 6. 
Norton, Charles Eliot, 26. 
Nova Scotia, Parkman's visit to, 
28. 

OCALA, 36. 

Ocklawaha River, the, 36. 

Ogillallah Indians, the, 323. 

Old French War, the, 24, 146, 187, 
320. 

" Old Regime in Canada," the, 36, 
66, 185, 205, 220, 271, 280. 

Onondaga Castle, 16. 

"Oregon Trail," the, xiii; gives 
striking scenes in Parkman's 
life, xiv; the trip of, 17, 3.5, 
134, 135, 136, 144, 304,309, 343 ; 
Parkman dictates, 25 ; prepared 
for publication, 26; 46, 58, 70, 
81, 115, 121,124, 130,201. 

Oswego, 16. 

Ottawa River, the, 35. 

" Our Common Schools," Park- 
man's, xiv, 254, 297. 

Overbeck, the artist, 193. 

Palatka, 36. 

Palermo, 65, 110, 114, 119, 149. 

Palmer, 16. 

Paradise, 16. 

Paris, 28, 35, 39 ; contrasted by 

Parkman with London, 88 ; 

Parkman's comments upon, 100- 

101 ; 172, 317, 335. 
Parker, Theodore, 66, 95, 96,312 ; 

his criticism of " Pontiac," 374- 

378. 
Parker, Mrs. Theodore, 95, 96. 
Parkman, Breck, 3. 
Parkman, Ebenezer, 1 ; sketch of, 

2-3 ; his diary, 2. 
Parkman, Elias, 1. 
Parkman, Elias^, 1. 



888 



INDEX 



Parkman, Eliot, 81 ; death of, 
340. 

Parkman, Eliza W.S., 7,312, 334, 
338, 339, 345, 351. 

Parkman, Francis, Rev., 2 ; sketch 
of, 3-5 ; 11, 45 ; letters from his 
son, 56, 57 ; 75, 79, 81 ; letter to 
Francis from, 81 ; 258. 

Parkman, Mrs. Francis, see Hall, 
Caroline. 

Parkman, Francis, chief interest 
of life of, vii ; his extreme re- 
serve, vii ; his thoroughness and 
sincerity, ix ; singular lack of 
personal elements in life of, x ; 
chief publications concerning 
Kfe of, xii ; little unpublished 
matter from hand of, xiii ; his 
autobiographic letters, xiii, 74, 
122, 140, 141, 163, 187, 190, 198, 
300,315,316,317,318-332; his 
miscellaneous articles, xiv ; an 
original man, 1 ; his descent, 1, 
2 ; his ancestors, 2-8 ; effect of 
his ancestry upon, 8 ; limitations 
imposed by his physical organ- 
ism, 8-9 ; his mental make-up, 
9; his personal appearance, 9, 
340-342 ; birth of, 1 1 ; his birth- 
place, 11; his childhood, 12; en- 
ters Harvard College, 12 ; his 
special interests at Harvard, 12 ; 
his college rooms, 12-13 ; his 
trip with Slade, 13-14; his 
trip with White, 13 ; his fond- 
ness for Lake George, 14 ; visits 
Hale and Perry, 14, 336 ; his trip 
to Canada, 15; his trip to Maine, 
15 ; birth of his deep enthusiasm, 
15 ; visits Europe, 15 ; graduates 
from college and enters Har- 
vard Law School, 15 ; his study 
of Indian life, 15, 24, 35, 75, 84, 
134, 136, 142, 143, 144, 145, 
147; his social life at Harvard, 



16, 17-19; his research through 
western Massachusetts, 16; his 
ambitious focussed on a definite 
work, 16 ; his trips to St. Louis, 
16, 35, 70, 119, 121; his trip 
through Pennsylvania, 1 7 ; the 
trip of the " Oregon Trail," 1 7, 
70, 134, 135, 136,' 144, 304, 310; 
his reserve as to his literary am- 
bition, 19 ; his letters to Hale, 
19, 22, 23, 80; his early begin- 
nings in gathering materials for 
his great work, 24 ; his health 
gives way, 24-25 ; devotes him- 
self to medical treatment, 25 ; 
dictates the " Oregon Trail," 
25 ; begins " Pontiac," 25, 325 ; 
Elliott's recollections of, 25-26 ; 
his marriage, 27 ; his first home, 
27; his later residences, 27; com- 
pletes work on " Pontiac," 27 ; 
" Vassall Morton " published, 28 ; 
his trip to Montreal, Quebec, 
and Nova Scotia, 28 ; becomes 
unable to walk, 28 ; his family, 
28 ; death of his son, 28 ; death 
of his Avife, 28; his visits to 
Paris, 28, 100, 101, 335 ; his 
alarming mental condition, 29; 
returns to Boston, 29 ; turns to 
Nature for consolation, 29 ; de- 
votes himself to horticulture, 29 ; 
his success in this field, 29-34; 
writes " The Book of Roses," 
32 ; receives appointment as Pro- 
fessor of Horticulture to the 
Bussey Institute, 32 ; gives up 
special efforts in horticulture, 
32 ; lienefits he derived from 
horticulture, 33 ; visits Wash- 
ington and Richmond, 34 ; an- 
other journey to Canada, 34 ; 
his journey to Fort Suelling, 35 ; 
elected Overseer of Harvard Col- 
lege, 35, 255 ; again visits Paris, 



INDEX 



389 



35 ; resigns as Overseer, and ac- 
cepts appointment as Professor 
of Horticulture, 35 ; again visits 
Europe, 35 ; visits the French 
Canadians, 35, 36 ; the " Old 
Regime " published, 36 ; chosen 
a Fellow of the Cori^oration of 
Harvard, 36, 255 ; " Frontenac " 
published, 36 ; helps organize 
the St. Botolph Club, 36 ; " Mont- 
calm and Wolfe " published, 

36 ; his journey to Florida, 36 ; 
camps with Farnham on the 
Batiscan, 37 ; his camp in the 
Rangeleys, 38; visits Europe 
with his sister, 39 ; his last jour- 
ney to Europe, 39 ; his increas- 
ing maladies, 39 ; " Half Cen- 
tury of Conflict " published, 39 ; 
characteristic close of his life, 
39 ; his death, 40 ; honors reaped 
by, 40 ; his membership in vari- 
ous societies, 41 ; memorial to 
he erected to, 41 ; unconsciously 
began his preparation for his- 
torical writing in boyhood, 42 ; 
his life on his grandfather's 
farm, 42 ; his collection of min- 
erals, 44; zoology naturally at- 
tractive to, 44 ; anecdotes of his 
early life, 44-51 ; his favorite 
recreations, 46 ; his study of sci- 
ence, 47 ; his essay on " Studies 
of Nature," 49 ; his return to 
nature, 51 ; concentrates his 
powers and activities ujjon writ- 
ing a history of the French and 
Indian War, 51 ; his remarkable 
preparations, 51-52 ; his jour- 
nals, 52 ; extracts from, 54-70, 
85-122, 143, 149-152, 192-194; 
202 ; a narrow escape, 54-56 ; 
letters home, 56, 57 ; " Explor- 
ing the Magalloway," 60-61 ; 
goes to Europe for his health. 



63 ; his surprising indifference 
to archaeology, 65 ; at Palermo, 
65, 110, 149; at Vesuvius, 65- 
66 ; at Lake Como, 66 ; crosses 
the Alps, 67-69, 133 ; in Scot- 
land, 69 ; his education in books, 
72 ; his early schooling, 72 ; 
Cushing's estimate of, 72-73 ; 
independence of his college 
course, 74, 146 ; his scholarship, 
77 ; his attitude regarding the 
law, 80-81 ; letter from his 
father to, 81 ; his study of man, 
83 ; collects materials for " The 
Jesuits," 84 ; significance of his 
" Vassall Morton," 84 ; his aver- 
sion for pliilosophizing, 85 ; con- 
trasts Americans with English- 
men, 86 ; at Basle, 86 ; at Milan, 
87, 99, 193 ; at Piazeuza, 87 ; at 
Gibraltar, 64, 90 ; contrasts Paris 
and London, 88 ; his tour about 
Sicily, 85, 92; at Sciacca, 92 
at Messina, 94, 149; at Rome 
86, 95, 151, 192; at Naples, 95 
107, 194 ; visits Virgil's tomb, 
96 ; at Cara, 97 ; at Subiacco, 
98 ; in Switzerland, 99 ; his let- 
ter to Mary Parkman, 101 ; at 
Brighton, 102 ; his taste for 
studying character, 102-103 ; 
his skill in reading men, 103; 
the " Star Theatre," 104 ; as an 
amateur actor, 105; at Bologna, 
108; in London, 88, 108; rarely 
expresses sympathy or admira- 
tion for men, 109 ; at Giarri, 
109 ; at Colico, 111 ; his ready 
appreciation of manliness, 111 ; 
his appreciation of the feminine 
character, 112; reviews memoirs 
of Mrs. Riedesel, 113-114; his 
remarkable memory of the eye, 
114 ; free from class prejudice, 
114-116; describes Luigi, 116- 



390 



INDEX 



119; the unity of his life, 121 ; 
early struggles with his own na- 
ture, 122 ; failure of " Vassall 
Morton," 124 ; depth of his early 
interest in poetry, 1 24 ; his re- 
liance Oil words and deeds as in- 
dications of character, 125-126; 
tragic element in his life, 127 ; 
muscular development his early 
hobby, 127 ; his self-discipline, 
128; his gymnasium work, 128- 
129 ; walking a favorite exer- 
cise of, 129; nature of his ail- 
ments, 131-133 ; at Florence, 
132 ; letter to his mother from, 
133 ; letters to Abbe Casgraiu 
from, 136, 204, 205, 211, 213, 
278,283, 314; his individuality 
in his work, 139 ; his chivalrous 
turn of mind, 139 ; his intimate 
relations \vith his work, 140 ; 
his metlaods of working, 140- 
159, 170-172, 174-177 ; his study 
of Komauism, 147-153 ; his 
study of documents, 1 53 ; his 
personal address, 155; his strug- 
gle with Margry, 155-157 ; his 
letters to Margry, 157, 173, 186; 
his discovery of Montcalm's let- 
ters to Bourlamaque, 158; his 
manuscript material, 160; his 
triumph over difficulties, 162- 
164; his supernormal energy 
and application, 165-167 ; his 
indebtedness to his misfortunes, 
168 ; effect of his physical weak- 
ness upon his work, 169-170; 
develops a remarkable memory, 
171 ; his reserve in regard to 
his work, 172; his exceptional 
efforts for accuracy, 177 ; letters 
to Gould from, 177, 293; his 
pursuit of the truth, 178, 182, 
204, 207 ; his philosophy of his- 
torical writing, 180-186 ; his de- 



mand for original sources, 1 83 ; 
choice of his theme, 186-190; 
his work slow in being recog- 
nized, 189 ; cannot be called an 
artist born, 191 ; his relations to 
art, 191-195, 199 ; his relations 
to nature, 195-199; his skill in 
writing, 200; his style, 200- 
204 ; his love of strong lan- 
guage, 202 ; a " Passionate Pu- 
ritan," 210; letter from Prof. 
Sparks to, 211 ; his manner un- 
der criticism, 211 ; his opinion 
of other historians, 212 ;. his 
methods in portraiture, 214 ; his 
life and character heroic, 216 ; 
his imaginative sympathy, 216; 
criticism of his portrayal of the 
Indian, 217-219; his detesta- 
tion of duplicity, 220 ; his likes 
and dislikes of his characters, 
220-229 ; similarity between La 
Salle and, 225-229 ; sources of 
his power, 239-232 ; his external 
success, 236 ; his citizenship, 
239 ; his miscellaneous papers, 
240; the "Tale of the 'Ripe 
Scholar,' " 242-251 ; stimulates 
a love for thoroughness in 
scholarship, 251 ; his interest 
in public schools, 252 ; his " Our 
Public Schools," 254 ; his ser- 
vices to Harvard College, 254- 
256 ; his admiration for strenu- 
ous vitality, 237, 258 ; his amus- 
ing aversion to ministers, 258, 
311 ; his attitude on the educa- 
tion of women, 259-260 ; his 
" Failure of Universal Suffrage," 
262-273 ; in opposition to nine- 
teenth century civilization, 265 ; 
opposed to democratic philan- 
thropies, 265 ; fired by the 
Civil War, 268, 287, 303; op- 
posed to the principle of equal- 



INDEX 



391 



ity, 268, to Woman Suffrage, 
273, 288-294, to educating the 
Indian, 285, to Universal Suf- 
frage, 287, to idealists and re- 
formers, 295 ; his letter to Col. 
Higginson, 272 ; his religious 
opinions and feelings, 284, 311- 
314 ; his " Remarks against 
"Woman Suffrage," 288-294 ; 
his definite philosophy of civili- 
zation, 294 ; his personal health, 
298-300; his youthful charac- 
teristics, 300 ; his martial traits, 
301-304 ; his love of action, 305, 
of study, 306 ; his philosophy of 
life, 308 ; his letter to Dr. Ellis, 
315 ; his autobiographical frag- 
ment, 316-332; his reasons for 
writing it, 317 ; letter to Brim- 
mer from, 321 ; his innate con- 
servatism, 333 ; his lack of hu- 
man sympathy, 334 ; his home 
life, 337; death of his mother, 
337 ; assistance rendered by his 
sister to, 339 ; death of his 
brother, 340 ; his homes, 342 ; 
his library, 343 ; his sense of 
humor, 345-346 ; his reading, 
347; his interest in children, 349 ; 
at the Wentworth Mansion, 352 ; 
his strong social instincts, 353 ; 
his conversation, 354-355 ; his 
friendship, 355-356 ; bibliog- 
raphy of his writings, 359- 
364 ; his poem, 365-373 ; Par- 
ker's criticism of " Pontiac," 
374-378. 

Parkman, Mrs. Prancis, see Bige- 
low, Catherine Scollay. 

Parkman, Francis ^, 28 ; death of, 
28, 334. 

Parkman, G., 105. 

Parkman, Grace, 28. 

Parkman, Katharine, 28. See also 
Coolidge, Mrs. J. T., Jr. 



Parkman, Mary, letter from Park- 
man to, 101. 

Parkman, Samuel, 2. 

Parkman, Samuel (son of Eben- 
ezer), 3, 11. 

Parkman, Thomas, 1. 

Parkman, WiUiam, 1. 

Parkman, William (son of Eben- 
ezer), 3. 

" Parkman Collection," the, 344. 

Parkman Crab, the, 31. 

Parkman Professorship of Theol- 
ogy, the, 4. 

Patchen, Captain, 13. 

Peabody, Dr. Ephraim, 5. 
•Peabody, Joe, 20, 23. 

Peltrie, Madame de la, 221, 232. 

Penn, William, 285. 

Pennsylvania, Parkman's trips 

through, 17, 144. 
Peoria, 111., 35, 178. 

" Percy Reliques," the, 347. 
Perry, Horatio J., Parkman's visit 

to 14; 21, 22, 78, 144. 
Phi Beta Kappa Society, the, 1 6. 
Philadelphia, 17. 
Phillips, Sir Thomas, 158. 
Phillips, Wendell, 278. 
Piacenza, 87. 
Pierce, Prof., 77. 

" Pioneers of France in the New 
World," the, 34,173,182,205,234. 
Pitt, William, 222. 
Pittsburg, 17. 
Plymouth, Mass., 5. 
Politi, Signore, 117. 
Pompadour, Madame de, 220. 
" Pontiac," see " Conspiracy of 

Pontiac." 
Pope, 347. 

Portsmouth, N. H., 13, 39, 44, 352. 
Prairie du Chien, 35. 
Prescott, 30, 212. 
Puritanism, 206, 210. 
Puritans, the, 5, 148. 



392 



INDEX 



QuAKEKS, the, 302. 
Quebec, xi, xiii ; Parkman's visits 
to, 15, 28, 35, 36 ; 224. 

Radcliffe College, 259. 
Rameau, 213. 
Rangeley Lakes, the, 38. 
Rannesi, Luigi, Parkman's guide, 

92, 93 ; described by Parkmau, 

115-119. 
" Red Jacket," Stone's, 213, 
" Rejected Addresses," 347. 
" Revue Canadienne," the, 205. 
Rhine, the, 68. 
Richmond, 34. 
Riedesel, Mrs. General, Parkman's 

review of the memoirs of, 113. 
Rio Grande, the, 134. 
Ripley, 25. 
Rochester, 16. 
Rocky Mountains, the, 24, 46, 119, 

198, 323. 
Rogers, Sarah, 2. 
Rogers the Ranger, 15, 220, 222; 

Parkman's poem on, 365-373. 
Roman Catholic Church, the, 

Parkman's study of, 148; 285. 
Romanism, Parkman's study of, 

147, 148, 151, 152, 153, 207. 
Rome, 85, 95, 113, 133, 151,192, 

193. 
Rossiter, Joanna, 2. 
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 278, 291. 
Royal Historical Society of Lon- 
don, the, 41. 
Royal Society of Canada, the, 41. 
R. T. D. Society, the, 16. 
Russel, William, 73. 

Sabbath Day Point, 13. 

Sacs and Foxes, the, in Boston, 

143. 
" Safe Side," the, 313. 
St. Augustine, 37. 
St. Botolph Club, the, 36,41, 353. 



St. Johns, 15. 

St. Lawrence River, the, 36. 

St. Louis, Parkman's trips to, 16, 

35, 70, 119, 121, 309. 
Saint Michel, No. 21 Boulevard, 

35. 
St. Peter's, at Rome, 152, 193. 
Saint Valier, 220. 
Salem, Mass., 1. 
Saltonstall, Elizabeth, 2. 
Saltonstall, Hon. Leverett, xii. 
" Sam Hall," 194. 
Sandwich, 2, 16. 
San Francisco, 340. 
San Martino, 150; monastery of, 

150; 151. 
Santander, 39. 
Saratoga, 13, 60. 
Sargent, Prof., 41. 
" Satan," Parkman's rifle, 130. 
Saturday Club, the, 353. 
Sault Ste. Marie, 16. 
" Scalp Hunter," the, xiii. 
Schooner Head, 336. 
Schutte, Mrs., 17. 
Sciacca, 92. 
Scotland, 69, 202. 
Scott, Walter, 69, 73, 199, 203, 347. 
Seneca Lake, 16. 
Shakespeare, Parkman's fondness 

for, 347. 
Shaw, J, C, 105, 106. 
Shaw, Robert, 26. 
Shea, J. G., letter from Parkman 

to, 178. 
Shelley, 348. 
Shimmin, C, 105, 106. 
Sicily, 70, 89, 92 ; country inns of, 

93; women of, 112; 148, 151. 
Sidmouth, England, 1. 
Silliman, Prof., 54. 
Sioux, the, 218. 
Slade, Daniel D., Parkman's trips 

with, 13, 14, 58. 
Smith, Horace, 347. 



INDEX 



393 



Snelling, Fort, Parkman's journey 
to, 35. 

Snow, 21. 

Snow, Mr., 64. 

*' Some of the Reasons against Wo- 
man's Suffrage," Parkman's, 288. 

Spain, 132, 146. 

Sparks, Prof., letter to Parkman 
from, 211. 

Spliigen Pass, the, 67. 

Springfield, 16. 

Standish, Miles, 218. 

Stanstead, 14. 

" Star Theatre," the, 104-105. 

Staten Island, 25, 326. 

Stembel, Commodore, 340. 

Stephentown, 16. 

Stevens, 252. 

Stevenson, E. L., 348. 

Stewart, Dr. George, letter from 
Parkman to, 349. 

Stockbridge, 16. 

Stoics, the, 310. 

Stone, his " Red Jacket," 213. 

Story, William, 2. 

Subiacco, 98. 

Switzerland, 99. 

Syracuse, 16. 

"Tale of the 'Ripe Scholar,'" 

the, 242-251. 
" Taming of the Shrew," the, 105. 
" Teatro Sebeto," the, 107. 
Tete Rouge, 304, 
Thayer, Gideon, 72. 
Thoreau, 196. 
Ticonderoga, 3, 13. 
Tonty, Henri de, 220. 
Trask, Sarah, 1. 
Treadwell, 21. 
Trenton, 17. 
Trois Freres, the, 21. 
Trout Run, 16. 
Troy, 14. 
Two Mountains, 34. 



Undekhill, 14. 

Union Club, the, 353. 

United States, the, 280, 331. 

"Universal Suffrage," Parkman 
on, xiv. 

Universal Suffrage, Parkman op- 
posed to, 262, 287. 

" Vassall Morton," xiv ; pub- 
lished, 28, 34, 84 ; heroine of, 
114, 123, 124; failure of, 124, 
189 ; 237, 305, 306, 314, 336, 338, 
341, 347. 

Venice, 139. 

Versailles, 193, 224. 

Very's, 21. 

Vesuvius, Mount, 6.5. 

Vimont, 232. 

Vinci, Leonardo da, 193 ; his 
"Last Supper," 194. 

Virgil, tomb of, 96. 

Walnut Street, No. 8, 29. 

Ward, Rev. Julius H., xii. 

Washington, D. C, 17, 34. 

Washington, George, 277. 

Washington, Mount, 13, 14, 16. 

Wendell, Barrett, writes memoir 
of " Francis Parkman," xii, 
352, 355. 

Wentworth Mansion, 39, 40 ; de- 
scription of, 352. 

Westborough, Mass., 1, 2, 3. 

West New Brighton, 25. 

Wheelwright, Edward, his "Me- 
moir of Francis Parkman," xii, 
2,3,5, 6, 12, 14, 17-19, 46, 73, 
77, 78, 129, 130 ; 143 ; his " Class 
of 1844," 16. 

Whipple, Edwin P., on Francis 
Parkman (father), 4. 

Whirlwind, the, 134. 

White, Henry Orne, Parkman's 
trip M'ith, 13. 

White Mountain Notch, the, 53. 



394 



INDEX 



"White Mountains, the, 14, 15. 
Windsor, 16. 

Winnipesaukee, Lake, 13. 
Winsor, Justin, xii, 1 83. 
Winthrop, Hon. Robert C, xii. 
Wisconsin, 144, 
Wild, 20. 

Willey House, the, 54. 
Williams, Mr., 143. 
Williams College, 40. 
Williamsport, 16. 
Willis, 25. 



Wolfe, 35, 215 ; Parkman's de- 
scription of, 222. 

Woman-suffrage opposed by Park- 
man, 273, 288. 

" Woman Suffrage," Parkman on, 
xiv, 

Worcester, Mass., 3. 

Wordsworth, William, 196, 338, 
347. 

Wyman, 261. 

YoUMAKS, Prof., 25. 



FRANCIS PARKMAN'S WORKS 

NEW LIBRARY EDITION. 

Printed from entirely new plates, in clear and beautiful type, 
upon a choice laid paper. Illustrated with twenty-four photo- 
gravure plates executed by Goupil from historical portraits, and 
from original drawings and paintings by Howard Pyle, De Cost 
Smith, Thule de Thulstrup, Frederic Remington, Orson Lowell, 
Adrien Moreau, and other artists. 

Twelve volumes, medium octavo, cloth, gilt top, price, 
$2.00 per volume ; half calf, extra, gilt top, $4.50 per 
volume ; half crushed Levant morocco, extra, gilt top, 
$6.00 per volume ; half morocco, gilt top, $4.50 per 
volume. 

LIST OF VOIiUMJES. 

PIOHEERS OF FRANCE Hf THE HEW WORLD I vol. 

THE JESUITS m NORTH AMERICA I vol. 

LA SALLE AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST ... I vol. 

THE OLD REGIME IN CANADA I VoL 

COUNT FRONTENAC AND NEW FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV. . I vol 

A HALF CENTURY OF CONFLICT 2 vols. 

MONTCALM AND WOLFE 2 vols. 

THE CONSPIRACY OF POHTIAC AND THE INDLAH WAR AFTER 

THE CONQUEST OF CANADA 2 vols. 

THE OREGON TRAIL I vol. 

Any work supplied separately in cloth. 

ItliUSTBATIONS. 

1. Portrait of Francis Parkman. 

2. Jacques Cartier. From the painting at St. Malo. 

3. Madame de la Peltrie. From the painting in the Convent des 

Ursulines. 

4. Father Jogues Haranguing the Mohawks. From the picture 

by Thule de Thulstrup. 

5. Father Hennepin Celebrating Mass. From the picture by How- 

ard Pyle. 

6. La Salle Presenting a Petition to Louis XIV. From the paint- 

infc by Adrien Moreau. 

7. Jean BaVtiste Colbert. From a painting b}' Claude Leffevbre at 

Versailles. 

8. Jean Guton before BouilliS. From a picture by Orson Lowell. 

9. Madame de Frontenac. From the painting at Versailles. 

10. Entry of Sir William Phips into the Quebec Basin. From a 

picture by L. Eossi. 

11. The Sacs and Foxes. From the picture by Charles Bodmer. 

12. The Return from Deerfield. From the painting by Howard Pyle. 



FRANCIS PARKMAN'S WORKS. 



13. Sir William Pepperrell. From the painting by Smibert. 

14. Marquis de Beauharnois, Governor of Canada. From the 

painting by Tonnieres in the Mus^e de Grenoble. 

15. Marquis de Montcalm. From the original painting in the posses- 

sion of the present Marquis de Montcalm. 

16. Marquis de Vaudreuil. From the painting in the possession of the 

Countess de Clermont Tonnerre. 

17. General Wolfe. From the original painting b}' Highmore. 

18. The Fall of Montcalm. From the painting by Howard Pyle. 

19. View of the Taking of Quebec. From the earlj' engraving of a 

drawing made on the spot bj' Capt. Hervey Smj'th, Wolfe's aid-de- 
camp. 

20. Col. Henry Bouquet. From the original painting bv Benjamin 

West. 

21. The Death of Pontiac. From the Picture by De Cost Smith. 

22. Sir William Johnson. From a mezzotint engraving. 

23. Half Sliding, Half Plunging. From a drawing by Frederic 

Kemington. 

24. The Thunder Fighters. From the picture by Frederic Remington. 

Parkman in perfect form, . . . That the books are light in the hand a7id pre- 
sent a clean page to the eye is particularly gratifying, because an historian is not 
merely an authority for purposes of reference alone ; he is an imaginative word 
painter, to be read for the sheer pleasure of reading him. — New Youk Tribune. 

It is hardh* necessary to quote here from the innumerable tributes to so 
famous an American author as Francis Parkman. Among writers who 
have bestowed the highest praise upon his writings are such names as James 
Russell Lowell, Dr. John Fiske, President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard 
University, George William Curtis, Edward Eggleston, W. D. Howells, 
James Schouler, and Dr. Conan Doyle, as well as many prominent critics in 
the United States, in Canada, and in England. 

In two respects Francis Parkman was exceptionally fortunate. He chose 
a theme of the closest interest to his countrymen — the colonization of the 
American Continent and the wars for its possession — and he lived through 
fifty years of toil to complete the great historical series which he designed 
when but a youth at college. 

The text of the New Library Edition is that of the latest issue of each 
work prepared for the press by the distinguished author. He carefully 
revised and added to several of his works, not through change of views, but 
in the liglit of new documentary evidence which his patient research and 
untiring zeal extracted from the hidden archives of the past. The New 
Librar)' Edition therefore includes each work in its final state as perfected 
by the historian. The indexes have been entirely remade. 



LITTLE, BKOWN, & CO., Publishers, 

254 Washington Street, Boston. 



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